HELP.. abandoned pool

[Swampwoman]

I don't think Freddie Mac or Fanny Mae will actually let Alexl do that anyway, so no worries -- at least they wouldn't let me when I bought my foreclosure. And rightly so for the reasons stated.

For starters, you're buying "as is." Secondly, the FMs have a budget for maintenance that includes things like opening, closing, and covering (but not cleaning.) So Alex, if you were in a location where closing is necessary to preserve plumbing and your deal was closing on the shoulder of that, you can include in the deal that FM pays for closing and putting on cover -- in my case they did.

For inspection, In my case,I paid a pool builder to start up and inspect equipment and confirm the pool was operational during my inspection period. The water was black, but like this one, holding water, so the liner was intact.

Now, as far as recovering a swamp, in my case I had water table issues potentially, so. Scooped 20 wheelbarrows of leaves/wildlife and then slammed like my life depended on it SLAM Process

In your case, knowing what I know, when you close, I'd go to Home Depot, rent the 7 hp trash pump for $60, get the sludge off the bottom that way as much as possible leaving a foot in the shallow end, refill, and maybe even run the trash pump again to get more of the sludge out. That way you won't clog the lines and can get filtering faster. Then onward to SLAM.

Before you start (and once you have a deal) get the TFP recommended test kit, XL because you'll need the reagents, at TFTestkits.net.

Read through pool school and slam instruction in advance, and keep us posted on the thread. I have lots of swamp tips when you're ready

Good luck on the house deal. You'd be surprised what abuse a liner can take. In ours, we got five more years out of it despite the putrid, 2 year accumulation of black water sludge. I'll post a pic to show you what TFP methods can do:

 

[alexl]

Wow! Thanks Swampwoman, thats a nice transformation there! We are meeting to do some paperwork sometime this weekend, ill let everyone know when we hear back from Fannie! The problem we are going to run into is october, November and December are the averaging months to calculate sewer charges for my municipality. I will have to call the city and see if i can get a waiver since we will be using far more water in the partial drain, refill sequence with trash pump than normal, which will affect our sewer rate for the next year! Any ideas how to kill off all of the mosquitos before i start work? I feel if i dump in a bunch of bleach it will just get eaten up by all the solids and not actually kill the mosquitos.

Alex

 

[Swampwoman]

Mosquitos are a tad problematic in that I'm not sure it'd be wise to treat the water (eg Dunks kill mosquito larvae) since you're going to reclaim some of the water. The other method, which is adding mosquito fish, would likewise make your conversion icky However, I would have the surrounding area sprayed a day or two before you start recovery work.

I was "lucky" in my swamp recovery in that it overwintered in snow climate and the we recovered VERY early in spring before temps were high enough to breed mosquitos.

However, bleach is cheap and any time I started to scoop, I did add a few gallons (this was before the slam initially) in he hopes to knock down any waterborn pathogens when scooping. That was likely pointless, because as it turned out, I had ammonia which immediately eats the chlorine until you've out dosed it to an order of 10x (which is why I think you should consider trash pump...if your cya has converted you will face this same scenario, but dilution helps a lot.)

The majority of scooping ended up being after I broke down the ammonia and started the slam. I think some thought I was wasting chlorine by doing that but it made me a lot more comfortable health wise.

If you do manually scoop, wear gloves, wash up well, etc. I wore a mask too in the initial pre-slam scooping, but that was also in part that the sulphur smell was overpowering and actually caused an early pool tech who attempted cleanup to vomit after removing the cover You're not likely this far gone, but do take precautions given your setting as wildlife offal/decay can contaminate water.

 

[alexl]

we submitted the offer, i will let everyone know how it turns out!

EDIT: have a question for ya'all, well more of a "what would you do?" In this situation, with unknown time the pool has been abandoned, unknown condition of the liner and other components and not knowing exactly what lurks behind the surface, would you attempt a cleanup of this pool or simply pump it all out with a trash pump and replace the liner to start 100% fresh? My first cheapskate response is to do everything i can to salvage the current situation, but a part of me thinks that may be penny-wise and pound foolish. A new liner will run me $1000-1500 and i am comfortable doing the work myself. This would allow us to pick our own design, get rid of the nasty water, and inspect the whole pool for it's general health. What say the experts?

 

[Swampwoman]

Alex, if you're comfortable doing the work yourself and cash flow isn't a concern and environmental condition on close are ideal, AND you're willing to read up a bit on installation issues (eg work fast, refill fast to reduce risk of wall movement, best to change in warm dry weather etc.) -- then I'd consider doing it that way.

With that said, I did get 5 more years out of mine, and learned a LOT about proper pool care incrementally through tout, so in my case, was glad I was in a position to feel very comfortable with the liner change...as a result, my lifetime cost of ownership was/is/should be quite a bit less

Good luck on the offer!
Cheers, SW

 

[Isaac-1]

I would suggest trying to save this one, then you can learn proper pool chemistry, testing and balancing your water without the worry of damaging your new liner if you do something wrong like dump a jug of trichlor in at once and end up bleaching out part of your liner.

 

[borjis]

It holds water, so it can't be that bad..I too would keep the one it has for now.

Good luck!

 

[JVTrain]

Draining as much of the water as possible without risking shifting the liner (about 1 foot in the shallowest area) is what I would do for draining. Allows you to get as much debris out as possible and removes as much organics as possible without risking a liner tear or shift if it's in decent shape. Then refill, get the water clear before winter and see what the liner looks like after some LIKELY organics stains in the liner have faded once proper FC levels are maintained. If you hate the liner then, replace it in the spring or whenever suits you. Water is still relatively cheap compared to gallons and gallons of bleach. It's good to be conscious about wasting water, but economically it's not a big deal.