We started draining the pool at around noon. The procedure has been slow but generally successful; the water level is dropping about an inch or so an hour. Hard to judge how long the whole thing will take, considering the irregular shape of our pool and the varying depths, but our electric sump pump is so quiet as to be unnoticeable (read: we won't annoy the neighbors if we run it all day, yeah!) and the small sewer inlet that we have on the far side of the house (not the large one in the bedroom closet) seems to be happily eating the water, so we'll call ourselves making good progress projectwise. I can't help but have this mental image of some lady a few houses down suddenly discovering pool water filling up her bathtub, though. :-}
We've borrowed our parents' latest toy, a pressure washer, and will stop pumping periodically to clean the pool sides (it requires the use of a hose, and we're using both of 'em with the pump) and experiment with our pool vacuum. The trick is that the inlet for the vacuum hose is up at the level of a full pool, but if we can fill the vacuum hose with water to start with (easy when you have a little pump right there happy to spew some at you -- yes, babylike, but much bigger and less cute) we should hopefully be able to cycle some of the water through the pool filter to get rid of some of the algae and decrease the risk of clogging our valiant little pump. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I guess I won't be doing much gardening this weekend, since I'll be somewhat hoseless for a while. :-}
4 comments:
So what exactly prompted this pool draining?
Short answer? The pool needs to be balanced for our annual BBQ, and we're failing to do so with chemicals. Long answer? We're also fairly sure the water hasn't been replaced in the last 10 years (possibly 20+), so it's probably about due; we have very hard water and no cover (multiple reasons), so we get a lot of evaporation, and one reason for our current difficulties, we're told, is that our pool water has become too hard ("a high level of calcium hardness"). Think of this as a control-alt-delete for our pool. :-}
ooh, a pressure washer! how's it doing? i've wanted one but worried that i'd just sit out back and try to kill flies with it...you know, after i've hosed down the driveway and sprayed down the house.
G loves it. :-) We only had it for the weekend, so after we return it we're going to go out and buy our own. I had the same question (what do we use it for after we're done with the current job), but G thinks it would be useful for periodic cement cleaning. I think he mostly thinks it's a cool new toy ("what else can I try to clean?!?"), but it *does* do an excellent job on the pool plaster. :-)
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