The Pool Saga

As mentioned in an earlier blog post or two, we bought a soft-sided above-ground pool this year. I fully accept the responsibility for the ensuing debacle, since it was my suggestion to purchase the pool.

The easiest way to explain the drama is just to show you pictures. Here is the pool the day before the Water Boy (yep, that's the company name!) came and put $160 of pristine water in the pool.
Later that very same day, something (probably the neighbor's dog) put his paws on the side of the pool closest to the weeds in the backyard. This pulled the pool in that direction and started an ongoing tipping process we could not stop. The pool would lean, lean, lean, until enough water spilled out to correct it for awhile. Then it would start to lean again and start the whole process over again.

But here we are, on the one night the water level was still pretty accurate and we were able to thoroughly enjoy it.The next night, TJ and my nephew Clark swam in the pool. You can see the pool is leaning further towards the weeds and the water has been spilling out. The part nearest the gravel is very, very saggy. The water level was down significantly from just the night before:And so, we watered the lawn with $160 of water after just four days of having the pool assembled:
Then Bill removed all the sod from a neighboring location, leveled it out with a level, and the relocation process began. We figured if we put the pool on a completely flat surface, we wouldn't have spillage issues:Then, because we were NOT willing to pay the Water Boy $160 to come back again, we filled it with water from the hose. Check out how yellow it is! It took 6 days of cleaning the filter every few hours and adding lots of chlorine before the water was clean enough to swim in.

Since then, the kids have been able to enjoy swimming in it several times. It still isn't perfectly level, but we aren't constantly having the water spill out. Bill isn't sure he wants to do this pool again next year. We may have to upgrade.

The entire process has still been worth it, though. TJ has loved swimming in the pool and after his first swim, told me it was the "best day of his life." That alone made all of the headaches and expense worthwhile.