For some reason, I was attracted to putting the swimming pool back into shape. There is something symbolic about it for me. Somebody had cleaned the shallow part of the pool with a pressure washer.
On Friday, I pressure washed the part of the deep end of the pool that had become accessible through pumping.
This left the bottom of the pool with about 6-8 inches of mud. One Saturday, after work day at our church grounds, I convinced two friends to go over with me and shovel out the mud into buckets, which one of the friends hauled up on a rope I adapted to the task by furnishing it with a metal clip.
In a bit over an hour two of us managed to get 95% of the mud shoveled into buckets and hauled out.
We tried to suction the remaining mud, but couldn't get the big pump suction hose positioned properly to succeed. So, Saturday afternoon we gave up.
Over the rest of the weekend, Grady and I both pondered solutions. Early Monday morning, we met up and shared our proposals for getting the last of the mud out. Grady graciously agreed to try my solution first. So we:
1) Attached the pump suction hose to a holder that I invented. Here it is:
This left the bottom of the pool with about 6-8 inches of mud. One Saturday, after work day at our church grounds, I convinced two friends to go over with me and shovel out the mud into buckets, which one of the friends hauled up on a rope I adapted to the task by furnishing it with a metal clip.
In a bit over an hour two of us managed to get 95% of the mud shoveled into buckets and hauled out.
We tried to suction the remaining mud, but couldn't get the big pump suction hose positioned properly to succeed. So, Saturday afternoon we gave up.
Over the rest of the weekend, Grady and I both pondered solutions. Early Monday morning, we met up and shared our proposals for getting the last of the mud out. Grady graciously agreed to try my solution first. So we:
1) Attached the pump suction hose to a holder that I invented. Here it is:
2) We then suctioned the water level as low as possible using our new hose holder.
3) Once we got as low as possible, we started adding water to dilute the remaining mud.
4) We kept diluting and pumping until the water was clear.
5) When we turned on the pool pump which circulates the water for cleaning, we got a cloud of new mud, but the pool's cleaning system should take care of that.
But, there is a price to be paid. I muddied my clothing a bit as you can see below.
At some point Friday, as I was pressure-washing, I was trying to wash off my foot to keep from tracking mud all over the clean part of the the pool. Those wands are long and the hihg, high pressure can make them a bit difficult to control. So, my foot got briefly hit by the pressurized water, and yes, it can take the hide off.
I saw the pool Tuesday, and it looks great.
And just think, G^d cleans up bigger messes than this, in my life alone.
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