swimming pool problems again

O dear, I think I am regretting encouraging my husband to agree to putting in a pool, we had a pool installed 4 years ago, and I cant believe how much work it gives you. Because we only live over here for part of the year the pool gets shut down in Autumn and every time we came over in spring we would find a green pool and would have to start the heavy process of trying to clear it and eventually giving up because it would break the pump (expensive) or would just not clear,( for one reason or another) we have a cartouche filter so cannot back wash like sand filters but apparently a good system, anyway eventually last year we investigated abris, for one we thought well it gives us longer to swim in it up to 6 months they said, it covers the security aspect, and it keeps the pool cleaner. What they didnt tell us is that in hot weather (well in the Charente thats every day in the summer) you should take the cover off completely otherwise your pool will go green (not that again!!) we go away from the house for the od week here and there during the summer and each time we came back the pool would be green again, and the cleaning process would have to start all over again! so exhausting and unless you have nothing else to do annoying! every time we called someone to help it costs a fortune because they have to travel sooo far, and I have just been told that we should have been advised by the abri seller that we had to keep the abri off for most of the summer an watch it even in the shoulder months because of the heat it generated and maybe because it wasnt a sand based filter and because we did go away for the occasional week we should have gone for another cover system not an abri, for one thing it shortens the life of the liner for the water to get soo hot an for another your pool goes green very quickly.

Thinking of having a pool installed? then get as much information as you can, we speak not bad french but understanding technical things in french is hard and go on uk pool sites even phoning and ask as much info you can, we have had to learn about balancing Ph/chlorine/alkalinity and even still we are struggling, one chap came along and said empty it and start again !! well as its a pool liner that is not possible, and if we had taken his advise we would have been in even more trouble! we have half emptied and filled and half emptied and filled already once this year and its expensive to keep doing this, we are so exhausted with it ,all we want to do now is balance the ph and get it to the state where we can winterise it , but its still green so we have to keep trying.... a word of warning... we have heard of a lot of people with similar problems so be prepared for a lot of work....or a lot of money....