The Great Pool Disaster of 2008

Yesterday we (Mom, Dad and me) finally got serious about getting our pool clean.  Our water was finally clean but it exposed A LOT of dirt and a little bit of algae at the bottom.  We spent the better part of our pool time yesterday vacuuming and brushing and wiping.  We needed chemicals but our pool store was closed on the 4th.  I took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese’s last night and there just happened to be an open pool store on the way so I stopped there on the way home.  We had a cookout with his family last night and when everyone was done swimming we dumped the chemicals in hoping FINALLY we’d have a perfectly clean pool.

Well.

I woke up this morning and rushed out to the pool and hoped to see a clean pool and was greeted with a pool with A LOT less water than it had last night. It was probably to the bottom of the skimmer line.  I made a quick trip around the pool to find a big puddle of water under the deck and in part of the yard. 

That began the calls to Mom and Dad trying to figure out if the dog might have done it yesterday, how to find a leak and how to fix a leak.  Dad recommended to wait until the pool quit leaking and then the hole would be at the water line.  Mom came over and was able to find a guy in the yellow pages that fixes leaks. 

$150 to find and fix the leak.  Gosh, I hate this pool right now.

Dad came over and thank goodness found the leak.  The problem?  It was on the bottom of the pool.  We couldn’t wait until it stopped leaking to fix it!  We made a quick call to the pool-leak-fix-it-guy and he said $50 to come patch.  Great.

So the guy gets here.  The pool has 3" metal thingies underneath the floor to hold up the sides.  Well, the sand had worn away and the metal was right against the liner.  It had finally worn through it and had created the gash right at the edge of the metal for a few inches.  Water was pouring out pretty fast.  He patches the one side and says it’s good.  Scott says how about you patch the other side because it looks like it’s getting ready to bust too.  Well, I go inside and start cleaning again and Scott comes in and says "We have river in our yard.  Don’t go out there yet but there’s another hole." 

I think I literally started praying.  What else could go wrong??  Gosh, I hate this pool right now.

Apparently when he put the glue on the other side, it melted the liner and a huge hole opened up on that side.  The water was POURING out under the deck.  I think we lost another few inches of water from the pool in a few minutes.  It was already going into the neighbor’s yard.

Scott gets his suit on a jumps in.  The guys sticks a sponge down in the hole. They get a bag of sand out from under the stairs and put that in the hole.  It was still going.  I call Mom and say "I think we just lost the pool."  And I really thought we had.  Meantime, the guy patches it about 4 more times and finally gets it stopped.

I go to Lowe’s and get some of that spray foam stuff to fill the hole from the outside of the pool that the washed away sand had caused.  Scott moved some sand back towards the pool hoping to give it some more support.

And here we are.  With our fingers crossed we haven’t lost our pool.  You might remember that we just got the pool last year from my parents’ old house and because of a run-in with Heather’s dog we bought this liner brand new last year.

I’m telling you, sometimes I just think we’re not supposed to have a pool.  But obviously it makes for some decent blog fodder.  Sometimes I feel like our pool is its own character around here. 

And without further adieu, here are pictures.

Here is our far down the water is now.  It was almost to to the top last night.

This is underneath the deck where it was coming out.  This WAS just grass.  Now all the sand is everywhere and you can see where he built the sand up against the pool.

And here is where the hole was.   This is looking down into the pool  You can see where the sand was washed out under it and it’s basically like a crater in the pool.    The vertical metal post you see is about 18 inches long.

The plan right now is to hope this holds up this year and empty and completely redo the pool next year.  We’ve been wanting to do that since we put it up as it didn’t go so well the first time but now I guess we have to.