Mayday Mayday . . . I think something bad happened

[MomUv5]

Quick backstory -

Bought a house in December with a pool and I know NOTHING about pools. My 18yo dd has a friend who works as a pool boy and he said he could open the pool for me and charge less than his employer does. The end result was that he dumped the leaves off the cover into the shallow end and disappeared.

About a week ago, I realized that disappearance was terminal and started trying to figure out what to do. Kids and I started raking out leaves. Took a sample of nasty brown water to pool store. Got the water level to the right place and started running pump. Found this forum.

Yesterday I found a Dolphin pool robot thingy. Stuck it in the water and it seemed to work. At least it was moving around under the brown stuff. Took it out of the pool last night after dark and left it lying on its side as the instructions said. Today, I went out and looked at it and saw a twig sticking out of the bottom of the thing. Water level is lower than it was yesterday.

Question: Do you think the twig has slashed the vinyl liner?
What do I do now?

 

[anonapersona]

Can't help. I know nothing about vinyl.

Try the search function, vinyl repair.

 

[JasonLion]

It is very unlikely that the twig did much of anything. The cleaner doesn't weight very much in the water, so there would have been very little pressure pushing down on the twig, and most twigs that have been in the pool for a while are fairly soft to begin with. There will often be things sticking out of the vacuum port doors when you take the cleaner out of the water.

 

[MomUv5]

It is very unlikely that the twig did much of anything. The cleaner doesn't weight very much in the water, so there would have been very little pressure pushing down on the twig, and most twigs that have been in the pool for a while are fairly soft to begin with. There will often be things sticking out of the vacuum port doors when you take the cleaner out of the water.

Oh. My. Goodness. I feel so relieved. I had visions of that thing slashing the bottom of the pool (at the deep end of course) in a dozen places and water leaking and causing huge, huge problems.

 

[duraleigh]

The Dolphin will not be of much help until you get the solids removed. It sounds like you have not raked enough material up off the bottom yet. Was the Dolphin clogged up when you removed it? Did it run it's full cycle?

 

[anonapersona]

So, how much lower was the water after sitting overnight? Any big puddles along the pool?

 

[MomUv5]

The Dolphin will not be of much help until you get the solids removed. It sounds like you have not raked enough material up off the bottom yet. Was the Dolphin clogged up when you removed it? Did it run it's full cycle?

The dolphin did not run a full cycle. It was quite clogged with nasty sludge-looking stuff and had a couple of leaves, the one stick, and few of those string things that oak trees drop in the spring.

I think we have gotten the majority of the big hunks out, but are still finding a few leaves. There just seems to be a tremendous amount of. . . sludge. It looks like leaves (or other organic matter) that has been in there a very long time and has started breaking down into dirt. When I use the leaf rake, I am mostly getting flakes of stuff that used to be leaves.

 

[MomUv5]

So, how much lower was the water after sitting overnight? Any big puddles along the pool?

No puddles that I could tell, but it rained a little bit yesterday so everything is a bit damp, and there is a huge concrete deck around the pool. Right now I have the hose running filling it back up and the connection leaks, so there is extra water out there from that.

 

[Thinkly]

I think cleaners like the one you have are designed to remove debris, dirt etc. from CLEAN water. I don't think they will fair very well in muck. Your filter should be able to clean the dirt particles from the water, but if you have large piles etc. you will most likely have to do that manually.

 

[MomUv5]

I figured out where the water went. There's a leak by the pump. I found it after refilling and with the pump not running the water is not going down any more.

Guess I need to get somebody out here to fix that. I don't do plumbing.