June 1 -- Outside
Believe it or not, at the end of April we hit 100 degrees here in San Antonio. That made me think. It was such a "cold" winter here and I wondered if we were in for one heck of a HOT summer. With that thinking, I opened my pool early.
BIG MISTAKE!
This being our 3rd spring here in Texas and our 2nd one in our home with an above-ground pool, I totally forgot about pollen season and our big Live Oak tree in the backyard. What was once a blue pool turned green and then brown with pollen. It took me days to vacuum and scoop it all out! What a MESS!
Lesson learned:
NEVER, and I mean NEVER
open the pool until the Live Oak is done dropping it's catkins everywhere
and the yard and deck have been cleaned from the mess!
Once I got the Oak's catkins out, the water never returned to clear, it was always cloudy. I was constantly at the pool store spending money on chemicals. Pool store #1 gave me some bad advice which I regret following and that makes the story even longer, and I won't go into that saga.
Then I battled algae. Oh my gosh! For about a week I was sucking the slimy, green stuff out with our vacuum, running to the pool store for water tests and dumping chemicals in to clear up the pool, spraying out the filter with a hose at least twice a day.
I got the algae cleaned out and it was just back to cloudy again, but rain came. Four inches of rain fell over the course of a couple of days at the end of May. Ever since then, the pool is either cloudy or green and cloudy. This weekend, pool store #2 thought the green was algae (again) so I bought an algaecide that was supposed to make one really cool chemical reaction when I mixed it with shock according to the directions. Nothing. No reaction. No change in the water. Still green. Still cloudy. Diagnosis: It's not algae, it's pollen!
Today I gave my pool store one more chance. They tested my water again and suggested a partial drain on the pool. So this picture finds me using the sump pump we bought in Nebraska for our flooded basement, draining 12 inches of green, pollen-y water out of my pool. It's definitely not algae or else the walls of the pool would be slimy. They are perfectly clean as I drain. I will refill with water straight from the hose, shock it with chemicals and then take another water sample to the pool store tomorrow. More chemicals will be in store to get the pollen out, but for now it's all about balancing the water so that the chemicals will work!
The store clerk promised my boys they would be swimming in their clear pool this week.
Fingers crossed! I'm not beyond asking for prayers for our pool at this point.
