Thanks for the replies everyone! Now I don't feel so lonely! It's the weekend for me again. I have a new wonderful 3 day work week and I'm off every Thurs-Sun. It's insane and I love it!
Casey:
Yes, it was disgusting. When I first looked out I thought everything was just floating but no, there was a whole bunch that sunk too. I was kicking myself for not putting my leaf net back on before the storm. I thought of it too late and ran out of time before work Tuesday.
Metallica:
It's just one tree causing all that mess!! It's the bane of my pool existence. It is a Bradford Pear tree which manages to throw some sort of something in my pool year round! Spring is little outer shell pieces from the blooms as they open followed by pieces of blooms and full blooms and their little pieces that made the pool look like it had poppy seeds floating all over it. Then in the summer it will drop the little "pear" ball things which go right to the bottom of the pool like marbles and are a pain in the neck to scoop out. Then in fall and over almost the entire winter, dead leaves. Not to mention shading the pool in the late afternoon.
It is right behind my fence but I'm pretty sure it's either halfway on my side of the property line or possibly even all mine. I've already hacked the heck out of "my side" of the tree but it's huge and I am dying to cut it down. This year I might rent the metal detector again to find the property stakes and find out once and for all. The other option is just going to the other house and seeing if the people there care if I cut it down. They don't seem to care much about their house much less there "landscaping!" I'm worried it may be a rental now though...
Taterfink:
I got the strap wrenches from Lowes and 2 came in the package. Lowes is about a minute from my house so I just ran over there when I saw online that they had them. I haven't tried yet because I was working. Today is the day although the weather is blech. Too cold. Hopefully they will work to get everything apart so I can fix my thread leak.
My issue with the fitting itself leaking was due to the hole size vs. gasket size. My home made ghetto too big gaskets completely fixed that problem though. I did notice that my original Intex fitting had just one gasket and it was on the inside. The Hayward came with one for inside and one for outside, they were just too small for my hole. More precisely, they were only about 1/8" bigger than the hole and it wasn't enough wiggle room to keep it from leaking. I just couldn't get it perfect enough with those gaskets. For the intake I will make my ghetto gaskets smaller so there isn't as much showing around the fitting, not that I really mind.
I'm actually looking forward to messing with it again. I guess 3 days off has made me forget how frustrated I was last week! lol I have to be able to make it stop leaking from the threads because everyone else has and if someone else can do it, I can too!!