The Saga of the Pool
July 8th, 2009 @ 9:30 by NormMonkey
Two years ago mah hunnybear and I bought a bag of pool.
You know the kind; you’ve seen ‘em before. Big blue bags, dough-nut inflated rims, filled with water, sitting on lawns. Ours is the circular 18′ diameter, 48″ deep variety.
A prerequisite of these pools is some level ground upon which to set ‘em up. At our place the land slopes gently away from the house. After we bought the pool we rented a gas-powered tiller and ripped a 20′ x 20′ square out of our weed-infested back yard. We tried to arrange the remaining dirt in a way that was somewhat level before putting down tarpaulins and then laying the pool out.
The first Year of Our Pool went well. At the end of that year, after we drained it, we flipped it over to completely empty it and dry the underside. Our plan was to flip it right-side up and dry that side, then pack it away. The reality is that we left it out on the lawn all winter. Next spring we had a dough-nut shaped dead spot on the lawn (light makes it through the thin central floor material but not through the thick edges). Since then, the weeds have done a good job of filling in and now we have a kind of nasty crop-circle in our yard.
At the end of last year our water pump choked on an obstruction or something and died. We also discovered that our weeds are a vigilant variety that grow under and even through tarps. Thus I hatched a plan: this year we would lay a proper patio down in our 20′ x 20′ patch for the pool (or, once we move, for the next owners to enjoy).
This plan partially failed when we discovered that we don’t have enough money to afford a proper patio. Still, we made partial progress: thinking to at least keep the weeds out and to have a pool area lacking in the sort of standing water that collects on tarps and grows mosquitoes, we laid down a bed of gravel over landscape fabric, compacted it and finally topped it with a layer of sand.
The sand looks nice, but it does have the unfortunate side effect of sticking to feet and ending up in the bottom of our pool. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let me back up a bit.
The work cost about a week, several volunteers’ time and a few hundred dollars in materials. The evening after we finished laying down the sand we laid out the pool. This, I believe, is the first and lowest data point on a graph plotting my state of anger and angst over this pool. The next data point was drawn when I made fruitless searches around the house and even a trip to the office[1] looking for my air pump. I ended the day dejected, but found the air pump hiding in a closet the next day. Triumphant, I went out to buy a replacement water pump.
My Sunday morning of work (post-triumph and shopping) begins with inflating the rim, pleasant visions of dumping water in the pool all day while relaxing on a hammock. Alas, ’twas not to be. It turns out that some animal, perhaps a squirrel or raccoon, chewed on the rim while the pool was stowed for the winter by our shed. I found one large and one small hole gouged by said animal, and here we add the next data point to our graph.
Fine. So. I find a patch kit and mend the holes. After waiting the requisite twenty minutes’ drying time, I try inflating it again and discover yet another hole during an inspection tour. *sigh*. Another patch, another half-hour of waiting. Finally, I inflate the rim and it seems to stay that way.
Next step: add water and wait a day for the pool to fill. It’s now mid-afternoon on Sunday.
Those playing along at home should note that it’s best to fill a pool like this on the weekend, when you have the time to wait all day for it to fill up. You don’t want to take too long filling the pool (e.g. filling it bit by bit on evenings after work), for you need to get it full and get your salt dissolved in it and get your pump pumping and your chlorinator working to keep things from growing in it. Filling it overnight is risky; 8h might overflow a partially filled pool.
So I was disheartened and dismayed to find, after dumping a bunch of water in the pool, that there’s a hole in the floor, too. The damned animal strikes again. Another data point on the grouch-o-meter as I spend some time draining the pool. I don’t have any good-size patches left, so I run to the store only to find that they closed a few minutes before I arrived. I stick a garbage pail lid under the hole to keep it dry.
Monday morning comes and I grump out of bed, phone in to say I’ll be late at work, and head to the store for patches. I get home and patch the hole in the floor on both sides, just to be safe, leaving them all day to set while I’m at work. I get home and start dumping water in the pool. Naturally the pool’s less than a quarter full by the time night falls, leaving me to figure out how much to close the tap so that it at least fills some more but doesn’t overflow during the night.
Tuesday morning I see that the pool is indeed quite full. “Finally!” I think to myself, “this ordeal is almost over.” I head outside in the pouring morning rain to connect and activate the water pump2, dump a bunch of salt in, and put the pool cover on. I take a shower. “Why bother?” you wonder, but at least the shower’s warmer than the thirteen degrees Celsius outside — and head to work.
When I get home? Disaster! The rim deflated — one of the patches developed a hole, ain’t that just awesome — and as it’s not sitting perfectly level, it overflowed on the far side. It overflowed so hard that it sent all my sand and gravel out into the yard, leaving a bare patch. I found the pool cover up against the fence.
Operating on that sense of despair that drives people to keep on plodding in the face of unrelenting failure, I try to shovel some of the gravel back into the hole. This fails in two ways: (1) I can recover less than a quarter of the lost gravel, the rest strewn across the yard marking the path of a torrent of water; (2) the insufficient amount of gravel I do recover is full of weed-bits from the yard. Weed bits which are now on the wrong side of the landscape fabric. Nonetheless I dejectedly pile more sand to fill in the remaining hole.
That corner of the plot is now very soft and un-compacted and will have to be dug out and completely redone before the time comes to lay patio pavers.
I place a patch over the hole in the failed patch — how sad is this — and wait the requisite drying time before inflating the rim. It once again appears to hold air. I decide not to dump any more water in the pool. It shall stay at its current level.
That night3, I go to activate the chlorinator. I plan to run it for an extra hour for the next couple of nights to shock the pool with a bit of extra chlorine. What do I find? My damned chlorinator doesn’t work. Through sheer luck I managed to get my hands on a spare one4 last year and so I have substituted that one in place.
If anything further happens, I shall drain this pool and then cut it up and stuff it into little green hefty bags that I’ll box up and mail ’round the world in an effort to keep this possessed bag of evil from ever coalescing again.
[1] The last thing I can remember using the pump for was inflating an exercise ball which I used as a seat at work, until I accidentally stabbed a hole in it with a screwdriver while I was working on a repair project.
[2] This is a good way to (a) get all the salt dissolved, in (b) such a way as to avoid a high concentration of it on the bottom of the pool — a problem which results in the chlorinator shutting down and complaining over too much salt.
[3] Sunlight breaks down chlorine, so my pump is timed to turn on at 22h and I set my chlorinator to start its four hour run shortly thereafter, giving the chlorine the best chance to kill things before the sun breaks it down the next day.
[4] This is a whole other story, but the brief version is that someone managed to get theirs replaced by the manufacturer and I got their old one. It works, but it has trouble setting the timing cycle.
