Pool music.. on a beautiful afternoon..

Here's a Roddie-tip for help installing a pool-cover to a round above-ground pool at closing.

#1. Find a pool-girl. This is my wife Lynne.. She's my pool-girl!



survey area.. and clear obstructions such as fire-pit bowls..  



Lay the cover out flat, top-side up and thread the cable through the covers' eyelet-grommets if not already done..




Now comes the ingenious Roddie part of the operation. Obtain 3 weights.. that can be hooked to the covers' grommets.. spaced equidistant half-way around. I use three 5-gal pails with coat-hanger wire hooks around the handles.




:lol!:This may look stupid.. but it works great!



Pretty-much self-explanatory. The cover won't fall in when it's being pulled-across the top of the pool.. and it's self-centering too. Carabiners for attachment would be nice if I had them. Maybe next year!

The pump's electrical-ground/bonding-post repair that I made last Spring, held-up well.



Lynne bought a "Pentair" Kreepy Krawly E-Z VAC (tm) this year. Guess who had to set it up... It's water-powered.. and its hose connects to a fitting that you install in the skimmer-bowl. It traverses the entire pool liner.. including climbing the walls.. in 6-8 hours. This is providing that certain stars line-up.. and the moon is in Saturn. Otherwise it misses areas.. even if it's left to run all day..  

Seriously though.. it's quite a sophisticated POS. The pools' water return hose is directed through a fitting in the pool-wall with an adjustable "eyeball-diverter" on the inside that swivels. It's a standard means of controlling the rate of circulation. This can alter the vac's cleaning-path if/when it's connecting-hose passes near the water-stream, causing the vac to miss some areas. So...  I had to install a "special" eyeball-diverter; included in the kit.. which diverts the flow 90 degrees minimum.. and more if swiveled. Aiming it "down" proved to be the least invasive to this marvel of engineering's automatic-operation. This is after hours of F*&#ing with different eyeball-diverter angles.. Oh and one more thing.. the ladder impeded its operation too, and needed to be removed. Something you don't want to do every time you vac the pool.

I'm glad it's over for this year. It was a high-maint. season with the Gypsy/Winter-moth caterpillar infestation that this area saw this Summer. It was terrible. You could hear them eating the leaves at night when it was quiet. Many deciduous tree varieties as well as conifers were attacked. Strange to see that happen to conifers.. but it looked like Winter seeing the Oaks and many other leaf-bearing trees eaten bare. The streets were covered with caterpillar dung.. where tree branches overhung. The moths were so bad for a few days.. you literally had to cover your mouth when outdoors.. to avoid breathing them in.

Roddie, I didn't hear any music or singing during in installation of the winter cover on the pool? Ya got dem oh it's gonna get cold again, blues? Brrr, not looking forward to winter.
Nice job with the 5gal buckets., that was my job with my brother in laws pool, till their kids got old enough to help out. It was a small price to pay for pool privileges during the heat of summer.

Marleysky wrote:Roddie, I didn't hear any music or singing during in installation of the winter cover on the pool? Ya got dem oh it's gonna get cold again, blues?  Brrr, not looking forward to winter.
Nice job with the 5gal buckets., that was my job with my brother in laws pool, till their kids got old enough to help out. It was a small price to pay for pool privileges during the heat of summer.

I got dem' "oh.. it's gonna get cold again.." blues Man! That's what we get here in New England! It's silly.. A few night's ago.. it got down to 34F.. Today was 78F. Forecast is for mid-80's peak-daytime over the next 48 hrs. Being New England.. there will be rain.. and it usually occurs when temps drop and the pressure rises. Can mess with the inner-ear.. and suddenly feel freakin' COLD! I think it's the barometric-pressure variations that mess with us. This region sees it all; four distinct "New England-style" seasons..

I need to run the snow-thrower.. and make sure it runs right..

I'm bumping this thread rather than starting another. I don't think I told this story.. We closed the pool last October.. and all was good. We've used a pool-cover pump in the off-season.. since having this pool. It's automatic.. and sits atop the cover in the center. Its purpose is to pump rainwater off the cover. It's freeze-protected.. has a sensor/float.. a power-cord and a garden-hose connection. Simple to install. Well.. it started to malfunction during the 2015/2016 season of use.. so we bought a new one last year. We bought a different brand.. a "Wayne" cover-pump, rated at "up to" 3000gal./hr... Wow! I installed it and washed my hands of "pool-boy" duty until Spring of 2017.. or so I thought...  

We got a lot of snow here in Rhode Island last Winter. February 9th saw a blizzard of over a foot of snow.




On the morning of Feb. 11th.. I woke up before my wife Lynne.. and sauntered into the kitchen where the swimming-pool is clearly visible through the sliding doors leading out to the deck.. and notice that the pool-cover has fallen into the pool..    and I don't see any water..    



Now.. I'm really reluctant to tell Lynne.. because this swimming-pool is her sanctuary.. her paradise.. her "everything". (seriously..) so I already know that as "pool-boy"..  I'm screwed. She freaks when I show her what happened. There's 18+ inches of snow.. and I go outside to further-assess the situation.

The grommets had torn-out of the cover.. and were dangling from the cable which did not break.



The cover-pump had emptied the pool in probably less than two hours after the cover fell in.



So.. I was faced with refilling the pool with "some" water.. after much discussion. This sucked.. because I hadn't drained the garden-hoses that Fall. They were coiled/frozen outside..  and stiff.

So.. I bring them inside and run the bathroom shower to thaw them out..



You know what comes next.. turn-on the outside water in the basement.. bring the thawed garden-hoses back outside in the freezing weather.. and put water back in the pool.




You simply can't make this stuff up..

Lynne's pool has been looking good.. despite the caterpillar infestation that we saw last May/June..



She's currently vacuuming it.. and listening to Pandora (John Meyer genre/mix) through an iHome Bluetooth-capable unit that I got as a Christmas-gift from work.



The red bowl is my "redneck excursion-cone" and is aimed toward the pool. You can do the same thing by placing just your mobile-phone in a small bowl on a low table or on the floor. The speaker should face "into" the bowl.. but not be blocked. You'd be surprised at how much better you can hear it.

I started the pool opening yesterday (5/22) The pool-cover had partially fallen below the waterline months previous.. (this Pool-Boy job sucks...)



and I had to deal with it sooner or later. It was a gorgeous day.. sunny, dry.. and 82F at peak. I start with the unwinding of the cable-winch.. then removed the winch.

I didn't take photos of this part... and let's just say; it's better that I didn't have the Pool Girl (wife-Lynne) help me pull the cover out of the pool. There were 5 unfortunate critters that had fallen in and drowned at some point. They were bloated and stinky..   Three squirrels and two chipmunks. I scooped them up individually with the leaf-rake and brought them to a spot over the hill in the woods. What a way to go... though.. right?   (Yea.. Did you hear about Alvin and Theodore? They drowned in Roddie's swimming pool...)

So I hooked up my 3/4" ID water hose and commence to filling the pool. Our well pump will fill a 5 gal pail in about 25-30 seconds.



I hauled the cover around the side of the house.. across the front yard and over onto the big side-yard to dry it out.







I had the hose running/refilling the pool for about four hours that afternoon. We're on a well.. but there had been plenty of rain over the last 30 days..

We have a new pump and motor (bought four years ago..) but the old pump still worked.. and I needed to get water circulating.. so I could add enough chlorine to disinfect the water ASAP... so I decided to apply some oil to the shaft-bearings. This pool pump, pool and filter came with the house when we bought it 14 years ago. We replaced the liner 4-5 years ago.. but all else was here when we bought the house.





I got all my hoses routed/connected.. and ready for when the water-line was high-enough to spill-over into the skimmer.



I'd have to wait until tomorrow (5/23) to continue. As soon as I woke up in the morning; I turned-on the water to commence filling the pool.

The skimmer "flap" has a styrofoam block that had been eroding over the years.. I could make a new block.. and I did.





By late morning 5/23.. I was ready to run the pump. The oil made a BIG difference. The pump is a lot more quiet. I ran it for about 2.5 hours before adding 2 gallons of liquid shock (chlorine) to disinfect the water.

I had re-adjusted the "eyeball-diverter" on the return-side (pool-wall) which worked really well. I think that the skimmer-function relies heavily on this setting.. for an optimal flow-through.

The filter pressure was at 6psi when I first started the pump. It began to rain before noontime.. and I decided to shut-off the hose that was filling the pool.

By mid-afternoon 5/23.. the rain had stopped. The filter-pressure had risen to 8psi. I'll backwash the filter tomorrow (5/24) If the water is clear enough; I'll use the leaf-rake to get some of the leaves/debris off the bottom. There's still a lot of crap in the pool.. but at least the water will be cleaner. We have a new self-contained/rechargeable vacuum system that we bought last year. I'll take some photos of it.. and the pool later today (5/24)..

We're planning a Memorial Day/family get-together/Bar-B-que for Sunday (5/26)... and I'd like to think that the pool will be ready by then.. weather-permitting.

My neighbors have an in-ground pool that the cover is currently underwater and filled with quite a bit of water from snow and rain. Ducks have been landing on it and floating around. Doesn't smell like a swamp...yet, but it looks like one. It's a motorized retractable cover. Not sure when she's going to get that dealt with, hopefully soon.

Swimming pools/spas/hot-tubs are a lot of work. They're nice when they're clean and kept-up.. but keeping them clean and kept-up is a daily job. Because of this; having a swimming pool in particular; can negatively affect the value of a property.

Only one solution, build a roof over the pool. See easy pezy!

starting to look better...

We bought this unit last year. It's a rechargeable/battery-powered/self-contained (bypasses the pools filter) vacuum system. It will run for nearly an hour before needing to be recharged. A full charge takes about 3-4 hours.











A pool-view from up-back in the woods where the Lady-Slippers grow. Unfortunately they'd already "gone by".. but I did find one still intact..