First a little recap from the end of Pool Season 2010.
September 19 I had the youth group over to swim and had a clear, though slightly cloudy, pool. Then the longest week of my life happened: we closed an office, I was taking 9 hours of grad school (which of course had assignments due that week), and I did not see the light of day at my house until Thursday evening. By that time the pool was black. I don't really understand how it happened in such a short period of time, but it did.
I was a little bit frustrated and dumped all kinds of chemicals into it trying to get it back to clear, though I had NO time and the temperature was starting to fall, so swimming was becoming less likely, however I did not want to close it and cover it looking like that because I remembered how horrible it was to open a few months earlier.
After trying to work in pool maintenance time into my already ridiculously busy schedule and leaves falling at ridiculous rates (I live in a very wooded area) I finally decided to cut my losses and plan on replacing the liner, which would mean draining the pool anyway.
So that was the plan. Spend tax return money on a new liner. Well life has a way of sneaking up on you when you make plans and some other stuff came up that my tax return had to be spent on, so I decided I would just rough it and make the liner last another year.
And here is the timeline of what the pool has looked like in 2011:
Spring Break: planned to start working on the pool, but the previously mentioned life got in the way and put it on hold.
April 1-8: attempted to vacuum the pool to get the leaves out of the bottom. Two problems with this idea: First, the water was BLACK, so I couldn't see what I was doing. Second, I live in a heavily wooded area and left the pool uncovered all fall and winter, so there were A LOT of leaves and the basket on my pump is tiny, not to mention there is the issue of pipes clogging.
April 9: I admitted defeat and decided I would drain the pool again. I put it on waste and went to Junior League Charity Ball. I came home a few hours later and the entire shallow end was drained, not exactly what I expected.
April 10: I cleaned all the leaves out of the shallow end in about an hour, not too shabby. I then attempted to start the pump again to get the deep end drained. It was a no-go. I was a little bit frustrated.
April 11: first trip to Thompson's of the year. I took in the O ring for the pump basket, though it looked fine, and tried to figure out what was wrong. They greased it and I came home, hoping it would work. Again, no-go.
April 12: Enter my handy little sub pump. This little sucker drained the whole deep end (it was a very, very, very good investment last year).
April 13: Kristin, not knowing what she was getting herself into, came over and helped clean out the deep end. It was disgusting, but she was a trooper.
April 14: I started filling the pool and realized that one of the spots that was patched before I owned the house had come loose. It looked higher than I could stand up in, so I decided that I would fill the pool to that level, get a raft, float over, fix it and hop out of the pool. Let's just say if there had been a video camera I would have won $10,000 on AFV. My attempt at floating did not work, so I ended up wading through the muck, praying there were no snakes and fixed it. A little known fact is that when you get a pool liner wet it becomes very, very slick. I have fallen into the water a few times and I tried to scoot up the liner on my rear and let's just say it didn't go very well. As I was in the pool I did not have my phone with me (water+phone do not mix), the ladder was too high, so the only way out was up the steep, now very slick slope. Somehow I managed to get up and out of the pool. I'm not sure if the neighbors saw me, but if they did I'm sure they got a laugh.
April 15: Running up the water bill while filling the pool.
April 16: I see the rip...
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