OUR REDNECK SWIMMING POOL

About a week before the Memorial Day Weekend, we put our swimming pool up.  It is sixteen foot in diameter and three foot deep.  Every year my other half insists on throwing the pool out and purchasing a new one, because we usually have to clean it up.  It takes the better part of one day with us both working on it, and I wouldn’t say that it’s a simple task. 

In 2014 we decided to clean the pool at the end of the season and simply fold it in half and laid a pool cover over it, so the following spring we could just unfold it and fill it up.  But, what we didn’t know at the time was that I would end up in the hospital that winter, and again in the spring with complications.  We didn’t put the pool up in the summer of 2015, due to my health.

Our poor little pool sat on the ground with puddles of water and dead leaves upon it for just four months short of two years.  When we tore away the pool cover and unfolded the pool itself, it didn’t look bad at all.  But then the palmetto bugs began to scatter, and when we lifted the sides of the pool up to see if we needed to clean under that area, the slugs were everywhere and more cockroaches too!  It was awful!

My other half was like, “No way!  We don’t even know if it’ll hold water!”  But I was very insistent refusing to add to the local dumps.  The typical American solution for everything is to get rid of it and buy new.  It is so much easier.  But then again, you’ll find yourself in the same situation come next spring – the pool is still going to need to be cleaned. 

So me and my amigo found ourselves cleaning the pool.  Our next task was to add air to the rubber ring that sits topside around the pool.  We don’t know how, but somehow water got inside the ring.  And if that wasn’t enough to make us quit, the rubber piece where you blow the air into the ring was totally missing! 

I was determined!  So I ran to the store and bought some bubble gum.  A lot of it!  We chewed and chewed while we inflated the ring.  Then came the time when we pulled the air pump from inside the ring – I was first as I jammed a huge wad of gum into the hole.  Then my other half spit her gum into my hand, and I spread it like a patch on the outer side of the ring.  It worked.

So then we filled the pool with water.  Then we had to clean the mud off the outside wall of the pool.  It was really looking pretty.  To look at it you would have never known how skanky that pool was just the day before.

The next day when we awoke though, the pool looked like it lost a foot of water.  This went on for the next few days.  We would refill the pool with water, and the next morning it would be a foot short from being full.  We walked around the pool all three mornings looking for wet spots on the pool and on the ground.  We couldn’t find any leaks.  We were both totally baffled.  It seemed that throughout the day the pool held water.  It was only at night that the water slipped away. 

Then one morning it became clear as to how the pool water was disappearing.  When we shut the pump off in the evening, the pump would leak underneath.  Instead of investing more money into a new pump, we got four two inch bricks, a patio chair and a bucket.  We sat the chair on top of the bricks and the bucket on top of the chair.  At night when we turn the pump off, we sit the pump up on the bucket (above the water line). 

No more problems.  The pool is good to go!

And as always, when the breath taking heat comes, we simply adore our little oasis underneath the shade tree.  The water is so refreshing; it stays nice and cool throughout the summer season.  We don’t even complain about the Florida heat.  The heat only provides us with an excuse to play like children again.

Take care of the pool, and the pool will take care of you.