I honestly don't think the swimming fouled the pool water much. Most of the nasty came from the bugs and vegitation blowing in. Like I said, each day we'd spend a fair about of time scouping out debris. The lifespan this time was about the same as a year or two back when my pump broke and I went without a pump for a while. Back then we stopped swimming until I got the new pump.

I don't think the pool water would have lasted much longer than a week without filtration, even with chlorination, the suspended solids load was beginning to stack up. As I said, it was probably cleaner than using lake water (for this area), and personally I wouldn't have hesitated to put it through a backpacking filter (have several) and drinking it, but not sure my wife and kids would have been willing to do that.

We had contacted several horse vets and they all strongly suggested not giving the horses pool water, saying that a horse's gut can be pretty sensitive and that it just wasn't worth taking a chance on if other sources of water could be made available. We didn't want to risk one or more of them colicing (sp?).

Anyway, Sunday was wonderful with flushing toilets and air conditioning. Life is good, and we learned some important lessons.