Pool Impressions

I killed our swimming pool.

Two weeks ago I put the winter cover on it temporarily, intending to winterize it and abandon the need for keeping an eye on it for 6 months or so last weekend. This I did not do, for reasons that escape me now but were damn good at the time I have no doubt. Then I didn't check every day to see everything was jake. This was an error.

Today I sprang into action at the crack of noon and ripped off the winter cover (already working on brewing a foul tea of rainwater, sumac leaves and mosquito larvae in the small pockets it seems to have no trouble forming for the purpose) and discovered the the pool water was a bilious green in colour and about as transparent as lead.

I leaped to the pump timer and madly twiddled the switch in a useless attempt to begin water filtration operations. The foul weather earlier in the week had obviously tripped the GFI and the filter hadn't been running for about three days. The water looked like pea soup. I am not kidding here.

Not only that, but a good quantity of the "tea" had washed back into the pool (since the water was bright green I figured some stinking brown stuff couldn't do much more damage) and taken with it about 400,000 second stage mosquito larvae (the sort that look like worms with a pipe sticking out of their asses).

I reset the GFI and disconnected the timer, connecting the pump to the mains directly. It will have to run 24/7 for the next few days just to clean up the colloidal gak that now serves for water. I also added not one, but two 1 lb pouches of shock into the water¹, broadcasting it around the edges of the pool. That should take care of the organic pollution (algae, mosquitoes, unclassifiable tentacled behemoths of the deep and so forth) and I'll be able to vacuum the crud up as the week progresses.

When I get home from work.

After dark.

1. Each one good for 12,000 gallons, or so they claim. Our pool has about 5,700 gallons in it, so it now has four times as much free chlorine in it than it should have. The liner has already changed colour as a result ↑