Clarity
My mother always told me, "Never own a pool unless you can afford a pool service. Better yet, join a country club". What's the saying? Mother is always right? Well, she was.
We do have a pool. As I have blogged before, it's ....head bowed in shame...an above-ground pool. Shhhhh. Perhaps some neighbors don't realize it yet.
My FATHER was quite unlike my mother. He bought the pool on a whim, no joke. I was with him as we "pool shopped" and when he realized he could a) have it by Monday and b) pay $50,000.00 less for it than for the kidney-shaped beauty down the street, he shoved his beyond-platinum card over the counter and the deal was done. Oh, this was January, by the way. He got some sort of discount for buying when it was 40 degrees and raining outside.
Anyway, because he was my dad and not my mom, this pool most certainly did NOT come with pool service. He bought it "for exercise" and we all found out the most exercise came from adding/measuring/subtracting and whining about chemicals. I remember my sister showed up the first summer he owned it and asked us "Why is the pool this color? I've never seen one this color before? The photos you sent were BLUE!". Um, well, yeah.
The second year he had it, his brother convinced him to give up on pool ownership and just "keep fish in it". He and my dad got almost giddy at the thought of sitting on the pool deck, fishing rod in hand, and pulling out fresh trout for dinner. He let the pool go completely black, to make sure there was absolutely no chlorine in it, and then he "stocked it". That experiment ended only after Perfect Daughter (then aged 11) begged her grandpa to "stop killing the baby fish" as she watched them pop up out of the murky water, one by one to float around the pool. It was unattractive in a way that horror movies find profitable. The black water sustained one kind of life, and that was slimy and attached to the pool sides.
That little episode required about $50,000.00 worth of chemicals to restore the pool to somewhat-blue. At about that point, he sold the house to me.
I took on pool ownership with gusto. I scrubbed, chipped (don't ask), vacuumed and re-calibrated every sort of different chemical that needed to be in or on or about the pool. I became very friendly with the pool store. I made it pretty again. REALLY. I mean, we have lived here for 10 years now and I can confidently say that I am the pool boy here and a darn good one. Rowdy is coming along and I look forward to the day when spring is here and the pool minions (Rowdy and Sweet Girl) tell me, "Mom, it's ready". Ahhhhhh.
A glitch occurred in mid-September...just at the end of the swimming season. The lever that controls the filter simply broke. It seemed to be a simple fix....we took it to my friends at the pool store and they handed it back over the counter. Done. Easy. I handed it to DH and Rowdy and several hours later, they came up to the house from the pool, somewhat wet, very hot and quite grumpy. Not done, and not easy. There was SOME humor in the crossed out/sharpied instructions on the new filter head label. Where it used to say, "Filter, Backwash, Waste, and Recirculate" it now said in black letters "NO" (where filter was) and "USE THIS ONE" where Waste used to be. They sheepishly explained that they had installed it backwards. I really didn't mind, as long as it worked. I turned it to "USE THIS ONE" and went up to the house.
A few hours later, the pool was a nice, murky green.
The pool is STILL a nice, murky green. True to herewegoagain priorities, a cold front meant that "we don't need to mess with the pool till next May", and all attempts to figure out why "USE THIS ONE" made it green were abandoned.
I, personally, still have hope. I went to the pool yesterday and took a good look at it. I realized that the reason it isn't blue is because...there is about one inch of fine sand covering the bottom of it. That reflects back in a "not really green, more like gray" (but better than black) way. I turned on the "DO NOT USE" filter and watched more sand pour into the pool.
OK, just to give you a little history. When I say I am "friendly" with the pool store, it goes more like this:
In 2000, after buying the house from my dad, I took in a water sample.
Pool Guy: "I've never seen anything like this"
Me: "My dad was trying to raise fish in the pool"
Pool Guy: "Hey, Johnny, her dad was using the pool for a pond."
Great guffaws. Sold me $200 worth of chemicals.
In 2007 DH weed-whacked the cord from the filter to the plug. HE rewired it. We used it for a whole year. The following year it wouldn't start. I took it to the pool store.
Pool Guy: "I've never seen anything like this. It's wired completely backwards."
Me: "It worked for a whole year."
Pool Guy: "Hey Johnny, come look at this. It's wired completely backwards."
Me: "My husband fixed it, it worked FOR A WHOLE YEAR."
Pool Guy and Johnny, "Ohhhhhhh, and you got in the pool every day? And no one was injured?"
Great guffaws. Had it fixed in a week. Pretty cheap as I recall.
In 2009, BFF bought the finest pool they had in stock. She gave my name as a reference. They gave me $50.00 worth of free chemicals. By the time I came in to redeem my little gift, BFF had bought pool number 2 from them due to a neighborhood "thing" over the first pool. They had never heard of such a thing. I thought I should get $100.00 worth of chemicals for sending her their way, but instead I took my shock and left.
In mid-September, I brought in the broken springs to the pool store.
Pool Guy: "Oh, this is an easy fix. Should take ten minutes."
Me: "So, my husband can do this?"
Pool Guy to Rowdy: "Hey kid, come and let me show YOU exactly how this is done"
Phone call 2 days later:
Me: "The pool is murky, the filter isn't really filtering, something is wrong"
Pool Guy: "I've never heard of anything like that happening"
Me: "Is there something we could have done wrong?"
Pool Guy: "Did you tell me your husband put it back on?"
I heard him cover the phone and call for Johnny.
Me: "Actually, it's pretty minor and really, the cold weather is here. We'll just leave it for now. Bye."
So, now that I've seen the "murky" is really "sandy", I have to call them and say that somehow, we have managed to make the filter spew sand into the pool. But not until May, of course. And I guarantee they have never heard of anything like that happening before.
We do have a pool. As I have blogged before, it's ....head bowed in shame...an above-ground pool. Shhhhh. Perhaps some neighbors don't realize it yet.
My FATHER was quite unlike my mother. He bought the pool on a whim, no joke. I was with him as we "pool shopped" and when he realized he could a) have it by Monday and b) pay $50,000.00 less for it than for the kidney-shaped beauty down the street, he shoved his beyond-platinum card over the counter and the deal was done. Oh, this was January, by the way. He got some sort of discount for buying when it was 40 degrees and raining outside.
Anyway, because he was my dad and not my mom, this pool most certainly did NOT come with pool service. He bought it "for exercise" and we all found out the most exercise came from adding/measuring/subtracting and whining about chemicals. I remember my sister showed up the first summer he owned it and asked us "Why is the pool this color? I've never seen one this color before? The photos you sent were BLUE!". Um, well, yeah.
The second year he had it, his brother convinced him to give up on pool ownership and just "keep fish in it". He and my dad got almost giddy at the thought of sitting on the pool deck, fishing rod in hand, and pulling out fresh trout for dinner. He let the pool go completely black, to make sure there was absolutely no chlorine in it, and then he "stocked it". That experiment ended only after Perfect Daughter (then aged 11) begged her grandpa to "stop killing the baby fish" as she watched them pop up out of the murky water, one by one to float around the pool. It was unattractive in a way that horror movies find profitable. The black water sustained one kind of life, and that was slimy and attached to the pool sides.
That little episode required about $50,000.00 worth of chemicals to restore the pool to somewhat-blue. At about that point, he sold the house to me.
I took on pool ownership with gusto. I scrubbed, chipped (don't ask), vacuumed and re-calibrated every sort of different chemical that needed to be in or on or about the pool. I became very friendly with the pool store. I made it pretty again. REALLY. I mean, we have lived here for 10 years now and I can confidently say that I am the pool boy here and a darn good one. Rowdy is coming along and I look forward to the day when spring is here and the pool minions (Rowdy and Sweet Girl) tell me, "Mom, it's ready". Ahhhhhh.
A glitch occurred in mid-September...just at the end of the swimming season. The lever that controls the filter simply broke. It seemed to be a simple fix....we took it to my friends at the pool store and they handed it back over the counter. Done. Easy. I handed it to DH and Rowdy and several hours later, they came up to the house from the pool, somewhat wet, very hot and quite grumpy. Not done, and not easy. There was SOME humor in the crossed out/sharpied instructions on the new filter head label. Where it used to say, "Filter, Backwash, Waste, and Recirculate" it now said in black letters "NO" (where filter was) and "USE THIS ONE" where Waste used to be. They sheepishly explained that they had installed it backwards. I really didn't mind, as long as it worked. I turned it to "USE THIS ONE" and went up to the house.
A few hours later, the pool was a nice, murky green.
The pool is STILL a nice, murky green. True to herewegoagain priorities, a cold front meant that "we don't need to mess with the pool till next May", and all attempts to figure out why "USE THIS ONE" made it green were abandoned.
I, personally, still have hope. I went to the pool yesterday and took a good look at it. I realized that the reason it isn't blue is because...there is about one inch of fine sand covering the bottom of it. That reflects back in a "not really green, more like gray" (but better than black) way. I turned on the "DO NOT USE" filter and watched more sand pour into the pool.
OK, just to give you a little history. When I say I am "friendly" with the pool store, it goes more like this:
In 2000, after buying the house from my dad, I took in a water sample.
Pool Guy: "I've never seen anything like this"
Me: "My dad was trying to raise fish in the pool"
Pool Guy: "Hey, Johnny, her dad was using the pool for a pond."
Great guffaws. Sold me $200 worth of chemicals.
In 2007 DH weed-whacked the cord from the filter to the plug. HE rewired it. We used it for a whole year. The following year it wouldn't start. I took it to the pool store.
Pool Guy: "I've never seen anything like this. It's wired completely backwards."
Me: "It worked for a whole year."
Pool Guy: "Hey Johnny, come look at this. It's wired completely backwards."
Me: "My husband fixed it, it worked FOR A WHOLE YEAR."
Pool Guy and Johnny, "Ohhhhhhh, and you got in the pool every day? And no one was injured?"
Great guffaws. Had it fixed in a week. Pretty cheap as I recall.
In 2009, BFF bought the finest pool they had in stock. She gave my name as a reference. They gave me $50.00 worth of free chemicals. By the time I came in to redeem my little gift, BFF had bought pool number 2 from them due to a neighborhood "thing" over the first pool. They had never heard of such a thing. I thought I should get $100.00 worth of chemicals for sending her their way, but instead I took my shock and left.
In mid-September, I brought in the broken springs to the pool store.
Pool Guy: "Oh, this is an easy fix. Should take ten minutes."
Me: "So, my husband can do this?"
Pool Guy to Rowdy: "Hey kid, come and let me show YOU exactly how this is done"
Phone call 2 days later:
Me: "The pool is murky, the filter isn't really filtering, something is wrong"
Pool Guy: "I've never heard of anything like that happening"
Me: "Is there something we could have done wrong?"
Pool Guy: "Did you tell me your husband put it back on?"
I heard him cover the phone and call for Johnny.
Me: "Actually, it's pretty minor and really, the cold weather is here. We'll just leave it for now. Bye."
So, now that I've seen the "murky" is really "sandy", I have to call them and say that somehow, we have managed to make the filter spew sand into the pool. But not until May, of course. And I guarantee they have never heard of anything like that happening before.
posted by herewegoagain at
9:06 AM
4 Comments:
hahahhahahha oh wow. this one killed me! I definitely definitely don't remember the pond stage--which uncle had that idea?
this is going into my memoirs. heh
i do feel bad for you though--but really it made for such a great blog entry, it was kind of worth it, right?
By
Sho, at 8:05 PM
Siobhan, I'm glad you thought it was funny. I left out the FUNNIEST part of pool ownership which you MIGHT remember..the summer we had you kids in there with vinegar to get off the lime deposits? "Aunt Betsy, it stings!"..ouch, ouch. I decided not to write that in case I got in trouble with the authorities! :-) ...oh, and do you remember the very first summer? When your dad went down and there was a huge gash in the pool and all 20,000 gallons of water were gone. He called me, "My kids broke Dad's pool". I SHOULD go back and put that part in!
It was Uncle Bob, of course, who wanted a fish pond!
By
herewegoagain, at 7:26 AM
Hahahaha no I do NOT remember the giant hole. Definitely remember the vinegar.
Oh I thought it was one of my uncles that convinced him--I could envision UJ or uncle chad doing that in a second.
By
Sho, at 11:59 AM
Yes, UJ and Chad would def. like a fish pond there....
Oh, the vinegar! I actually think that was getting the last vestiges of "pool as pond" out of the liner. Ugh. You guys were troopers. Mean Aunt Betsy.
By
herewegoagain, at 4:38 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home