Natural swimming pool maintenance

[RasJane]

I bought a blow up pool for the kids to play in this summer. It finallly got hot enough so we inflated it, filled it and enjoyed it. Great, except it uses more water than I had envisioned. I'm not very good at picturing gallons of water etc. apparently.
I don't really want to dump out that much water on a regular basis. Nor do I want my boys swimming in more chlorine and chemicals than what's already in our city's water.
What can I do to keep the water "fresher" longer. To keep the slime at bay to extend the time between refillings. I was considering just pouring in some baking soda and seeing if that helped. But then I thought some of you might have just the answer.

[lindberg99]

No clue about keeping it clean. We just had a small wading pool and I would dump it out every time, figuring it was watering the lawn. My neighbors had a pool probably like what you have and she was going to keep it covered and full but she had such a problem with grass and dirt getting in that she couldn't do that.

I also just wanted to mention that you should be very careful about leaving it full of water in your yard if it isn't fenced in. I left our wading pool with water in it once and went in, thinking we'd use it later in the day. Within about 15 min, the neighbor's 2 yo had managed to get out of his house and was in the pool, completely unattended. He was fine but kids can drown so quickly and in not much water that I never left it full and unattended again.

[Leta]

I don't have a pool, but on the back of the big 4# boxes of Arm & Hammer baking soda, there's directions on how to use baking soda to maintain pool ph. I know that this is what my aunt in FL uses, too, but she has some equipment to test her pool's ph as well.

Maybe you could go to the A & H website and look around.

[RasJane]

Thanks, I'll do that. The pool is getting a little slimey. I introduced the "game" of watering the garden and shrubs with cool recycled buckets. That may take care of a lot of it. We'll see.

[~MoonGypsy~]

You can try peroxide too. Google it and you'll find alot of information. The main problem is normal (medicine cabinet type) peroxide is not strong enough to do a complete disinfection. I think they recommend 35% for swimmimg pools.

Baking soda will raise the pH of the pool, so I don't know if it'll do much good in keeping it from turning green. Borax is a better alternative, as it'll stay in the water, whereas baking soda tends to... go away for whatever reason.