Chemical Warfare

Yesterday we managed to put together the entire machine room but the PVC glue must allowed to harden for at least 12 hours before it gets into contact with water. 

So we couldn't test run anything yesterday. No clue whether the pump works or there will be fountains squirting out of each pipe connection.

To be quite honest this had me so worried that I woke up before four this morning and couldn't get to sleep again. So it became a rather early morning today.

When I popped out this morning the pool had taken on a green/brownish color, mostly looking like a duck/frog pond.

Frog pond

It was really about time to get the pump/filter up and running. There was a coating of sand and muck all over the pool bottom. Most of it since the time when we refilled. The fine grained stone flour/sand flies around in the wind. We have started to lay ground cloth to stop the sand from flying around. It's also there to stop anything from growing once we get cranking with building the wooden deck.

To help the pump a bit I loosened the cap where you inspect/clean the filter and backfilled the pump directly with a garden hose. This way I got rid of all the air trapped in the pipe from the outlet of the pool to the inlet of the pump. When starting the pump it just picked up the water and immediately started to build a bit of pressure. The pump must never suck plain air as it could take damage from that.

Oh well what a relief, things are actually working. Following the manual and backwashing the filter first. That is the procedure to run the water backwards (from down to up) in the filter to get rid of dirt caught in the sand and push that out into the waste pipe.

Then attaching the "vacuum cleaner" and sucking up all the muck in the pool. Note that if the pool is as contaminated as ours it's better to set the filter to "waste" causing the water to go directly to the waste pipe without clogging the filter. Sure a good deal of water gets wasted but considering the amount of sand in the pool there was really no option.

Some time later one could actually see the pool bottom again...hooray.

Some vacuuming later

Our local Miamipool sales representative popped by with some goodies. As a side note: This is the major reason for our choice of vendor...they have guys close by to you and they make house calls on Sundays. Anyways it was time to strike back...with vengeance. Once the pool is clean of major debris it's time for chemical warfare. All kinds of stuff such as flocking agent, Baquacil (instead of chlorine) but my favorite has to be the "Chock". It's apparently used when taking the pool into usage after winter or in our case for the first time.

Loads of chemicals were dumped into the pool making it very hazy. Guess it's the flocking agent doing it's work. We won't see the final result until tomorrow when it has done its job and major particles should have dropped to the pool bottom. 

Whilst Agneta spent some quality time with a brush trying to get rid of the algae that sticks to the walls when there's no cleaning agents.

I was busy trying to resurrect the previously demolished wooden deck.
Things didn't go quite as we planned from the beginning. The original idea was that the pool would cut into the deck but due to solid bedrock we had to move the pool so now the deck is an itsy bit too short. Don't think that'll be a problem. Though what bugged me most was that the pool got a bit lower than we had calculated so I had to spend the better part of the day lowering the framing to the old deck.  Which in an essence means cutting grooves into the framing in order to lower it on the concrete posts/supports.

As a final to the week we've also started to replant the grass hoping that in a near future the dinosaur tracks are covered and all forgotten.

Next week will be a vacation week as I'm off to Sweden Rock.

Title reference: Chemical Warfare/Show no mercy/Slayer