This is the last post about that stupid pool I promise.
We finally gave in and drained it. The next time someone says "it's so simple" to my face, we're going to play a little game called "fronthand/backhand" wherein I present the option of fronthand/backhand and the offending comment-or then chooses fronthand/backhand and I apply my fronthand/backhand swiftly across their mouth. Unfortunately, this game can only be played once as the other party usually picks up on the rules fairly quickly and will not play again. I saw this game on an episode of Key and Peele. It was amusing. I digress.
To be fair, draining the pool really should have been "just that simple". There are, in fact, three manufacturer installed ways to drain that pool. There is a drain installed at the bottom. All one has to do is unscrew the cap and replace it with another, easily screwed on piece that allows the water to freely flow from the pool. It even allows one to add a garden hose so the water can be directed elsewhere, thus preventing a small flood in the immediate vicinity.
Options two and three are built into the the filter itself. One simple places one of the pool hoses inside of the pool and either chooses "drain" or "waste" and the filter does all the work. Again, if one has a long enough filter hose it can prevent a swampy back yard.
However, we did not have the piece that connected to the drain. So option 1 was no longer an option. I found that I could shove my big toe in the drain and the water would escape, but frankly, I wasn't interested in sitting beside the pool with my toe in the hole as a new pool formed around me and I sank into the mud. I guess I'm just not that committed.
Options 2 and 3 disappeared when we couldn't achieve the suction needed between hose, filter and water to remove the water, because you have to have all three of those things to remove water from the pool using that method.
As all three manufacturer methods were no longer available, and nothing can just be simple, draining the pool was not that simple. Mr. D did a little research on the good 'ole world wide web and found a fourth way to remove the water called "siphoning." Maybe you've heard of it. People use it to steal gas in the movies. We did a slightly altered version where we placed a garden hose in one end of the pool and then turned the water on. We left it on for a minute and then turned it off, disconnected it from the house, and carried it (upright) to the other end of the yard where we placed it on the ground in an area that was lower than the end of the hose in the pool.
It worked! Huzzah! Water was draining from the pool! It took three days.
After day two I was getting a little antsy and was considering sticking my toe in that drain for a few hours. I did, in fact, stick my toe in the drain when my son, who was in the pool (don't ask) realized the drain poked out on the inside and he could stick his fingers underneath it to keep it open. He wedged a little piece of plastic under the lip and the drain stayed open! Huzzah! Two exits for water! Things were looking up.
Every couple of hours I went outside to swirl the water around to ensure that the muck actually made it out of the drains. Oh my naivete!
On day three, I woke up refreshed and ready to clean out the dregs of the pool, happy to fill it with clean water and start over. I walked outside with a smile on my face and what do I see as I approached the pool? Eighteen inches of nasty green water. See, the drain didn't go all the way to the bottom and while the garden hose did, the flow of water had ebbed to the merest trickle. Also, in spite of the fact that I'd kept the peas soup stirred the entire time, only the clear water had escaped.
I climbed the ladder and stepped into the pool with a bucket and new attitude.
One of my big issues with wallowing through the sludge was the ginormous gash I was sporting on my right ankle. See, what had happened was, I was shaving my leg two days before (yes, just the one). My shower is rather narrow, so I have to get creative and contort-y when I shave. So there I was, heel pressed against the wall, toes pointed the the sky, knee to my nose, pushing the shower head away with my right hand, whilst trying to shave with my left hand, but I am not left-handed, you see. Thus, I decided to rearrange my position by holding back the shower head with my left hand and shaving with my right. Things were going relatively well until I reached my ankle which was tweaked in such a fashion that the tendon that runs aside my ankle was flexed more than usual...It was a new contortion I was trying. I shant be repeating it, is what I'm saying.
It was about that point that I lost interest in continuing that particular activity. I called for Meenie and asked her to bring a hand towel and large bandage with her. I told her I was gonna stick my leg out the shower and she would need to quick dry my leg and slap that bandage on post haste. She asked where the cut was and I assured her she would see it. So I stuck my leg out there and wow! it was a bleeder. She slapped that bandage on like a pro, but it was already filled with blood before I had dried off. Now, I like to think I am a nerves of steel kinda girl, but I am not.
By the time I was dressed and making my way to the couch the bandage was leaking and my head was pounding. I was nauseous, light headed and seeing stars. It was pitiful. I eased myself onto the couch and called Meenie over to ask her to change my bandage, but I was breathing real slow and deliberate like so the conversation went like this:
Me: I need you to change it. I'm bleeding out...
Meenie: Mom, you're such a drama queen.
Me:...of the bandage.
It was pretty funny.
Anyway, back to the pool that I'm wading in with this large gash that I'm sure is going to get infected and then it will get gangrene and they'll have to amputate and then all I'll have to show for my efforts is a stump and will anyone appreciate the sacrifice I made for them. No! No they will not. These and other angry thoughts fill my brain as I bend, scoop and toss nasty green water out of the pool and just like that, two hours have passed and suddenly, the pool is clean!
Yay! I went and reconnected the hose and fresh clean water began to fill the pool. We have crystal clear waters by 4:30 that afternoon. It was beautiful. I shed a tear.
My friend Tomaco has told me the difference between white people and black people is that white people hope you won't and black people wish you would. So tell me how simple it is just to start over and just drain the pool.
I wish you would.
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Battle With the Pool Season 2
For those of you who may not remember, we bought an above ground pool last year because...it really did seem like a good idea at the time. However, the idea began to sour almost as soon as we left the store.
Why? http://dpdavidson.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-rain-in-spain.html
That's why.
We made it through the winter with everything intact (or so we thought) but when Spring came we learned the truth and it was ugly. So, so, ugly.
The cover that had come with the pool was, how to put it nicely...worthless, so I ended up using a tarp to cover the pool. It worked pretty well, but then it rained once or twice and then the water froze and melted so then there were puddles and do you know what likes to spawn in puddles? Mosquitoes.
Yeah, so as soon as it was warm enough, we got hustle outside with buckets to remove the nasty water that had collected on top of the tarp, because the water in the pool was pristine, and I did not spend the winter keeping it covered so I could immediately contaminate it with mosquito larvae, doyouhearme!
However, in removing the ocean water upon the tarp, we flooded the back yard which ripped Mr. D's knickers because he had wanted to mow down the forest (a.k.a. backyard) that evening. Maybe it was the sight of a million pre-winged mosquitoes wiggling in the tarp water under my nose, but I felt my issue was a little more pressing than his. I really didn't want to be the family responsible for infesting the entire neighborhood. Maybe I hadn't conveyed that message clearly enough to him. He thought I was just being a brat. That's another story, and I will tell it. It's crazy and it's not his fault.
At any rate, the yard was flooded, but the tarp was off and the pool water was clear and beautiful and even though you could see the schmutz on the bottom, a little bit of chemical intervention, a little suck, suck from the pool vacuum, and running of the filter and we should have been good to go, but NO, it can't ever be that easy.
I plugged in the filter and the clear top cracked. Well, dammit.
You know, I've seen it a lot lately, where the loss of the smallest, seemingly insignificant thing can render the entire entity completely useless. It is astounding how often that happens. For example, the smallest piece broke in the driver's side seat belt of Eenie's car, so her seat belt wouldn't latch. If her seat belt doesn't latch she can't drive her car (as her parents, we won't allow it. Period. The end). Thus her entire car is useless.
Anyway, the top was broken, thereby rendering the entire pool filter useless. Two futile weeks spent in search of a replacement top gave us unfiltered and therefore, green, water and we ended up buying a completely new filter because that one little piece can only be bought from England and is unavailable until August. Remember those mosquitoes? They were about to have a whole lot more breeding ground if we didn't step up our game. Also, you can chemical the ever-loving life out of your pool water, but it still needs a filter because those june bugs can't swim and don't remove themselves.
So Mr. D orders a new filter, but dammit it all if he didn't check to make sure the hoses that came with it fit the pool. Because they didn't, but it wouldn't have mattered if he had because the brand of pool we bought (Bestway - avoid it like the plague) is the ONLY brand that uses the size hose it does. Also, because size wasn't enough of an issue, the new filter's hoses screw on while our old hoses were clamped.
I managed to fit our old hoses onto the new filter (yay!) and we were in business (!) until I went outside the next morning and found that the outgoing hose (old) had sprung a leak. DAMMMIT! Bear in mind, this was in the same four week period that we were planning and executing Eenie's graduation ceremony and party, planning and executing a week long trip across the mid-west, wherein half way through the trip the AC in the van died, Meenie was preparing to take her driver's test, and the car she needed to use was the car that no longer had a functioning driver's side seat belt, and we were also preparing to take Eenie to Utah to spend the Summer with my brother and sister-in-law. So this was the annoyance that just kept on giving.
I couldn't use the hoses that had originally come with the pool. None of them, because the second hose cracked the next day, and every day we can't run the filter is another day the algae gets further ahead of us. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out some way to adapt these stupid friggin hoses for my pool and I think, "I can't be the only person in the world who has this issue!"
Amazon had adapters. I ordered and installed them. I would like very much to say we have won the war and the Davidson's are able to enjoy the pool once more, but that would be a dirty, dirty lie because it is a dirty, dirty pool.
Mr. D thinks we should drain it, but I feel like doing that is a sign of defeat and if we drain it, I just want to get rid of it, but we've come to the place where we've invested too much time, energy and money just to let it go. I hate it when I find myself in that position. It's like the dang garden all over again.
We should just drain it, but I'm no quitter. I will, however, use every curse word I've ever heard while I continue to beat my head against the pool filter of futility.
Stupid pool.
Why? http://dpdavidson.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-rain-in-spain.html
That's why.
We made it through the winter with everything intact (or so we thought) but when Spring came we learned the truth and it was ugly. So, so, ugly.
The cover that had come with the pool was, how to put it nicely...worthless, so I ended up using a tarp to cover the pool. It worked pretty well, but then it rained once or twice and then the water froze and melted so then there were puddles and do you know what likes to spawn in puddles? Mosquitoes.
Yeah, so as soon as it was warm enough, we got hustle outside with buckets to remove the nasty water that had collected on top of the tarp, because the water in the pool was pristine, and I did not spend the winter keeping it covered so I could immediately contaminate it with mosquito larvae, doyouhearme!
However, in removing the ocean water upon the tarp, we flooded the back yard which ripped Mr. D's knickers because he had wanted to mow down the forest (a.k.a. backyard) that evening. Maybe it was the sight of a million pre-winged mosquitoes wiggling in the tarp water under my nose, but I felt my issue was a little more pressing than his. I really didn't want to be the family responsible for infesting the entire neighborhood. Maybe I hadn't conveyed that message clearly enough to him. He thought I was just being a brat. That's another story, and I will tell it. It's crazy and it's not his fault.
At any rate, the yard was flooded, but the tarp was off and the pool water was clear and beautiful and even though you could see the schmutz on the bottom, a little bit of chemical intervention, a little suck, suck from the pool vacuum, and running of the filter and we should have been good to go, but NO, it can't ever be that easy.
I plugged in the filter and the clear top cracked. Well, dammit.
You know, I've seen it a lot lately, where the loss of the smallest, seemingly insignificant thing can render the entire entity completely useless. It is astounding how often that happens. For example, the smallest piece broke in the driver's side seat belt of Eenie's car, so her seat belt wouldn't latch. If her seat belt doesn't latch she can't drive her car (as her parents, we won't allow it. Period. The end). Thus her entire car is useless.
Anyway, the top was broken, thereby rendering the entire pool filter useless. Two futile weeks spent in search of a replacement top gave us unfiltered and therefore, green, water and we ended up buying a completely new filter because that one little piece can only be bought from England and is unavailable until August. Remember those mosquitoes? They were about to have a whole lot more breeding ground if we didn't step up our game. Also, you can chemical the ever-loving life out of your pool water, but it still needs a filter because those june bugs can't swim and don't remove themselves.
So Mr. D orders a new filter, but dammit it all if he didn't check to make sure the hoses that came with it fit the pool. Because they didn't, but it wouldn't have mattered if he had because the brand of pool we bought (Bestway - avoid it like the plague) is the ONLY brand that uses the size hose it does. Also, because size wasn't enough of an issue, the new filter's hoses screw on while our old hoses were clamped.
I managed to fit our old hoses onto the new filter (yay!) and we were in business (!) until I went outside the next morning and found that the outgoing hose (old) had sprung a leak. DAMMMIT! Bear in mind, this was in the same four week period that we were planning and executing Eenie's graduation ceremony and party, planning and executing a week long trip across the mid-west, wherein half way through the trip the AC in the van died, Meenie was preparing to take her driver's test, and the car she needed to use was the car that no longer had a functioning driver's side seat belt, and we were also preparing to take Eenie to Utah to spend the Summer with my brother and sister-in-law. So this was the annoyance that just kept on giving.
I couldn't use the hoses that had originally come with the pool. None of them, because the second hose cracked the next day, and every day we can't run the filter is another day the algae gets further ahead of us. I'm racking my brain trying to figure out some way to adapt these stupid friggin hoses for my pool and I think, "I can't be the only person in the world who has this issue!"
Amazon had adapters. I ordered and installed them. I would like very much to say we have won the war and the Davidson's are able to enjoy the pool once more, but that would be a dirty, dirty lie because it is a dirty, dirty pool.
Mr. D thinks we should drain it, but I feel like doing that is a sign of defeat and if we drain it, I just want to get rid of it, but we've come to the place where we've invested too much time, energy and money just to let it go. I hate it when I find myself in that position. It's like the dang garden all over again.
We should just drain it, but I'm no quitter. I will, however, use every curse word I've ever heard while I continue to beat my head against the pool filter of futility.
Stupid pool.
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