Hi guys. I want to share this and wasn't sure where to do so, so I will ad it here so others may know that it IS possible and doable. Even with the dingy-est (if that’s a word) woman doing it 
So, I have introduced myself in the newbie thread previously. Bout…mmm March 7th-ish. Short history, bought our dream house, it sat empty from bout 6months after it was built for five years, with a pool, uncovered. As you know that would make it a swamp!
I want to say, I was soooo lost upon getting this pool. I would walk out and look at it, sigh with disgust and go in and tell my husband, let’s just get a new liner. He was sure we could clean it up. I called several places, being in northern Indiana, not a lot of pool places open in Jan/ Feb…March came….WITH SOME HEAT! I started to clean my pool on last week of feb / beginning of march..
I was using my net with that long pole. It was a lot of work. Hours I was spending out there scrapping Crud out of the pool.(pic of the stuff I was getting out at bottom of page too) All sorts of stuff, AFTER removing what was left of the pool tarps, (which wasn’t much) I found pool tarp clips (talking like 40 I fished out), stones…I lost count at some point I think I hit fifty:x, TUMBLE WEED…lol yes…I am not even joking…We live out on a lot of land and its quite windy, so the weeds were just building up in to big stacks. Let’s see what else, piles and piles of algae. I was dropping it all in a 5 gallon bucket and then emptying it daily. I think total I emptied it was about 6. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it was: x
Needless to say, it was ugly. Well the worse I had ever seen. Well until I found this forum! Then I found new hope and light at the end of the tunnel.
We had called a place that comes and marks off your land where you can dig at to install some electric fencing. Needless to say the guy who came says to me: “I use to take care of the pool for the previous owners, and will be willing to help you clean up the pool.†So I took his card and called him, he wanted 100 dollars to just come here, then a 100 each hour after that. I asked if he was going to teach me how to run the pool and keep it balanced ect. That was another 100 each hour for lesson on “how tooâ€. My husband was like NOW FLIPPING WAY! Told me to go Google it, learn everything I can about pools etc. I went to site after site as I said previously until I found TFP site, which was the only site that gave straight answers to my questions. It didn’t list a bunch of usless info, and it was easy to follow and float about on it.
In short it was a God send.
I followed the steps of the swamp posts. I read the threads where others had same pool problems I did. The one thing I couldn’t find was I had an extra hole in my pool when everything was hooked up. I ended up calling my bro in law who happened to find the pool light hidden in our basement under the stairs ïŠ so if I had had the light, everything this forum had told me worked. In fact it did work, just couldn’t find that light, had no idea we even had one for it.
It was a lot of work. I am an extreme couponer and had a lot of bleach already on hand. I counted ïŠ I started out with 14 bottles. To the average person this is a “life time supply†To the pool/swamp owner; this is a drop in the bucket. I used a total of 22 gallons of bleach to bring this back to a normal level of CL. I did the math. My bro in law insisted I not use straight Clorox. He insisted that I use the pool chlorine. After reading here, I couldn’t do that. Being a couponer I found a .25 cent coupon off one gal, and a sale at menards for .88 cents. My girlfriend works for Clorox Company and I called and asked her, “is menards bleach 6%?†She confirmed it was. Total saved by buying bleach was tons! The straight CL from our local store is $8.99 vs. .85¢ - .25¢ coupon = .60¢
8.99 FOR THE STRAIGHT CL For Clorox Bleach .60¢
x22 x22
--------- _____
$197.00 $ 13.22
$197 - $13.22 = TOTAL SAVINGS $183.78
FYI my bro in law said he spends about $500.00 each year to open his pool. YUCK!
I was prepared to pay that price for the CL in the beginning! Let’s not forget the savings of the digger guy too! Who knows what he would of cost me! I also found out from this site that I can clean the filters and reuse them. We had a set of 5 being watched in eBay…They were not cheap either. So I bought 1 good one, and used the 2 back and forth that I had on hand to clean the pool, which I am also saving for next year to use when I open the pool again. I will use those for getting it in shape, then the new one for it for everyday use.
Yesterday I “officially†opened our pool for the kids to swim.
I couldn’t have gotten it to the point it’s at now without the help of this forum. I am truly grateful that people like you guys are willing to help share what you know to help people save money. I am a firm believer in paying it forward. As I previously mentioned I own a big site and extreme couponer. I have been spreading your name like wildfire
So I’d like to share this.
With my savings I bought 20 more gallons of bleach, 20 dollar store beach towels (cos I have 8 kids and they all have friends and needed more cheap fast towels) 5 Small rafts, 20 pairs of arm floaties, a new vacuum head (mine broke while cleaning the pool lol) 10 bags of shock, one bucket of 3’ chlorine tablets also just some odd and end pool toys divers and goggles and what not, and I splurged and bought the best test kit I could find. Because as the forum said…Everything revolves around your results. I can’t tell you guys how much this site helped me. I am truly grateful for finding you guys.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
For the savings, for the insite, for the offered help, for the fast replys to my questions and pm’s. I really think this is great what you guys do, keep it up! ïŠ
Can I change my name to sparkling clean pool in indy?
Before pic 1: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/71 ... 12120.jpg/
Crud from pool: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/70 ... 12078.jpg/
The pool tarps that were IN the pool: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/28 ... 12075.jpg/
Week2 pool: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/80 ... 12121.jpg/
week 2 still gettin yuck out: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/21 ... 12125.jpg/
Pic of pool week 2 after filters were added : http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33 ... 12153.jpg/
The filter pics: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/10 ... 12150.jpg/
Week 3 pics: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/84 ... 12147.jpg/
Almost Clean pool: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/85 ... 12163.jpg/
YaY clean pool! http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/19 ... 12166.jpg/
So, I have introduced myself in the newbie thread previously. Bout…mmm March 7th-ish. Short history, bought our dream house, it sat empty from bout 6months after it was built for five years, with a pool, uncovered. As you know that would make it a swamp!
I want to say, I was soooo lost upon getting this pool. I would walk out and look at it, sigh with disgust and go in and tell my husband, let’s just get a new liner. He was sure we could clean it up. I called several places, being in northern Indiana, not a lot of pool places open in Jan/ Feb…March came….WITH SOME HEAT! I started to clean my pool on last week of feb / beginning of march..
I was using my net with that long pole. It was a lot of work. Hours I was spending out there scrapping Crud out of the pool.(pic of the stuff I was getting out at bottom of page too) All sorts of stuff, AFTER removing what was left of the pool tarps, (which wasn’t much) I found pool tarp clips (talking like 40 I fished out), stones…I lost count at some point I think I hit fifty:x, TUMBLE WEED…lol yes…I am not even joking…We live out on a lot of land and its quite windy, so the weeds were just building up in to big stacks. Let’s see what else, piles and piles of algae. I was dropping it all in a 5 gallon bucket and then emptying it daily. I think total I emptied it was about 6. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it was: x
Needless to say, it was ugly. Well the worse I had ever seen. Well until I found this forum! Then I found new hope and light at the end of the tunnel.
We had called a place that comes and marks off your land where you can dig at to install some electric fencing. Needless to say the guy who came says to me: “I use to take care of the pool for the previous owners, and will be willing to help you clean up the pool.†So I took his card and called him, he wanted 100 dollars to just come here, then a 100 each hour after that. I asked if he was going to teach me how to run the pool and keep it balanced ect. That was another 100 each hour for lesson on “how tooâ€. My husband was like NOW FLIPPING WAY! Told me to go Google it, learn everything I can about pools etc. I went to site after site as I said previously until I found TFP site, which was the only site that gave straight answers to my questions. It didn’t list a bunch of usless info, and it was easy to follow and float about on it.
In short it was a God send.
I followed the steps of the swamp posts. I read the threads where others had same pool problems I did. The one thing I couldn’t find was I had an extra hole in my pool when everything was hooked up. I ended up calling my bro in law who happened to find the pool light hidden in our basement under the stairs ïŠ so if I had had the light, everything this forum had told me worked. In fact it did work, just couldn’t find that light, had no idea we even had one for it.
It was a lot of work. I am an extreme couponer and had a lot of bleach already on hand. I counted ïŠ I started out with 14 bottles. To the average person this is a “life time supply†To the pool/swamp owner; this is a drop in the bucket. I used a total of 22 gallons of bleach to bring this back to a normal level of CL. I did the math. My bro in law insisted I not use straight Clorox. He insisted that I use the pool chlorine. After reading here, I couldn’t do that. Being a couponer I found a .25 cent coupon off one gal, and a sale at menards for .88 cents. My girlfriend works for Clorox Company and I called and asked her, “is menards bleach 6%?†She confirmed it was. Total saved by buying bleach was tons! The straight CL from our local store is $8.99 vs. .85¢ - .25¢ coupon = .60¢
8.99 FOR THE STRAIGHT CL For Clorox Bleach .60¢
x22 x22
--------- _____
$197.00 $ 13.22
$197 - $13.22 = TOTAL SAVINGS $183.78
FYI my bro in law said he spends about $500.00 each year to open his pool. YUCK!
I was prepared to pay that price for the CL in the beginning! Let’s not forget the savings of the digger guy too! Who knows what he would of cost me! I also found out from this site that I can clean the filters and reuse them. We had a set of 5 being watched in eBay…They were not cheap either. So I bought 1 good one, and used the 2 back and forth that I had on hand to clean the pool, which I am also saving for next year to use when I open the pool again. I will use those for getting it in shape, then the new one for it for everyday use.
Yesterday I “officially†opened our pool for the kids to swim.
I couldn’t have gotten it to the point it’s at now without the help of this forum. I am truly grateful that people like you guys are willing to help share what you know to help people save money. I am a firm believer in paying it forward. As I previously mentioned I own a big site and extreme couponer. I have been spreading your name like wildfire
So I’d like to share this.
With my savings I bought 20 more gallons of bleach, 20 dollar store beach towels (cos I have 8 kids and they all have friends and needed more cheap fast towels) 5 Small rafts, 20 pairs of arm floaties, a new vacuum head (mine broke while cleaning the pool lol) 10 bags of shock, one bucket of 3’ chlorine tablets also just some odd and end pool toys divers and goggles and what not, and I splurged and bought the best test kit I could find. Because as the forum said…Everything revolves around your results. I can’t tell you guys how much this site helped me. I am truly grateful for finding you guys.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
For the savings, for the insite, for the offered help, for the fast replys to my questions and pm’s. I really think this is great what you guys do, keep it up! ïŠ
Can I change my name to sparkling clean pool in indy?
Before pic 1: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/71 ... 12120.jpg/
Crud from pool: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/70 ... 12078.jpg/
The pool tarps that were IN the pool: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/28 ... 12075.jpg/
Week2 pool: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/80 ... 12121.jpg/
week 2 still gettin yuck out: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/21 ... 12125.jpg/
Pic of pool week 2 after filters were added : http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/33 ... 12153.jpg/
The filter pics: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/10 ... 12150.jpg/
Week 3 pics: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/84 ... 12147.jpg/
Almost Clean pool: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/85 ... 12163.jpg/
YaY clean pool! http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/19 ... 12166.jpg/
