Guys. Girlfriend rented a house with an inground pool in the back yard. We are trying to bring it back to life.
The house is owned by a private owner in town who hired a building management company to run the ins and outs of the house. The building management company said the pool hasn't been opened for a couple years. Shaa, as if. More like at least 5.
My girlfriend was advised that the pool use comes with the house if we maintain it and sign a waiver. Ok fine. A couple weeks ago, the girlfriend contacted the management company and started the ball rolling on trying to open it back up. The cost of the filter install includes the round of chemicals it will take to initially open the pool.
We have been weed wacking the 5 years of growth from around the pool on and off for a couple weeks. We pulled the tarp cover out of the pool which fell in long ago. The pool is in barely fair condition but we don't care as long as the water is clean and cold.
The Building management company hired a pool company to survey the pool and components. Turns out the sand filter was supposedly shot and the pool house supposedly vandelized as per the pool company. So the pool company, via communications with the building management company, at the building owners expense, replaced the filter with a brand new one. The motor and attatched basket thing are original.
So today, we are officially on our first vacation this year. I get here and survey the pool, it's conditon, the replacement of the filter, and what more it will take to get it up and running.
It's a disaster. Firstly, the pool has one intake at the skimmer like all pools do, and this one has two return lines leading to Jets on each side of the pool. This can be seen by two black pipes for the returns to pool, and one white line from the skimmer.
Well the pool company hooked up one black jet as intake, and the other as return. They just left the white pipe from the skimmer laying on the ground!
Naturally, the filter is doing almost nothing to filter the water as the pump is struggling to pull in a large volume of water through a return jet 16" below the water line, and then send it back out through one clean water return jet. It's designed for a large volume for intake from the skimmer, and designed to return clean water via 2 jets, not one. DOH!
So i just got off the phone with the management company and they are going to call the pool company. Ok, thats being taken care of.
Last night the management company drops off 2 five gallon jugs of shock, and a big tub of a sodium bicarbonate thing to bring up the ph. I dump in one jug of shock and sprinkle the entire contents of the baking soda stuff into the pool. Per the management company, we wait 2 days and dump the second shock jug into it.
Here is my next issue. So the pool is filled with tadpoles and frogs. So i go out there this morning and start skimming to get rid of leaves and animals, moving or otherwise. Well, i take off the cover to the skimmer, and i find this in the skimmer. It just barely fits.
Naturally, the girlfriend pokes it out towards the skimmer entrance, i snag the snapper with the net, and dump it into the creek down the hill next to the house where it came from.
Here is where the real problem starts. I start skimming the top for leaves and in 10 minutes, the floaters are gone. Next i start scraping the bottom. The nightmare begins. I filled this large wheel barrow up in 30 minutes, and there is NO END in sight. The pool is roughly 20'x30'? And what you see is only 30 minutes of the 3 foot shallow end. The drop starts 6 feet towards the deep end and i fear the worst is down there.
It smells horrible, of course it does, it's decomposing leaves, tadpoles, and who knows what else.
Here are a couple pics to show you what we are dealing with.
From shallow end.
From the deep end.
So the problem is, once the filter is hooked up correctly, it will take a team of ten guys working 8 hour shifts, about a week to skim out the several years of decomposing matter and who knows what else down there. If i bring this up to the management company, they will relay the info to the owners who may ditch the idea of opening the pool all together.
My assumption at this point is that the owners figured that the house is worth more in rent with a working pool. And since we volunteered to try to open it, we are the guinea pigs to see if we can.
The issue is, even if i dump a dozen five gallon jugs of shock in the pool, it's not gonna help the years of decaying matter at the bottom of the pool.
I considered renting a trash pump and having at it but this isn't my property and i'm just the boyfriend trying to help.
For those who have done this before, is my only option to drain the entire pool with a trash pump and refill with fresh water?
If thats the case, the management company will have to step in and take over.
Can anyone help who has done this before please ?
Thanks !
The house is owned by a private owner in town who hired a building management company to run the ins and outs of the house. The building management company said the pool hasn't been opened for a couple years. Shaa, as if. More like at least 5.
My girlfriend was advised that the pool use comes with the house if we maintain it and sign a waiver. Ok fine. A couple weeks ago, the girlfriend contacted the management company and started the ball rolling on trying to open it back up. The cost of the filter install includes the round of chemicals it will take to initially open the pool.
We have been weed wacking the 5 years of growth from around the pool on and off for a couple weeks. We pulled the tarp cover out of the pool which fell in long ago. The pool is in barely fair condition but we don't care as long as the water is clean and cold.
The Building management company hired a pool company to survey the pool and components. Turns out the sand filter was supposedly shot and the pool house supposedly vandelized as per the pool company. So the pool company, via communications with the building management company, at the building owners expense, replaced the filter with a brand new one. The motor and attatched basket thing are original.
So today, we are officially on our first vacation this year. I get here and survey the pool, it's conditon, the replacement of the filter, and what more it will take to get it up and running.
It's a disaster. Firstly, the pool has one intake at the skimmer like all pools do, and this one has two return lines leading to Jets on each side of the pool. This can be seen by two black pipes for the returns to pool, and one white line from the skimmer.
Well the pool company hooked up one black jet as intake, and the other as return. They just left the white pipe from the skimmer laying on the ground!
Naturally, the filter is doing almost nothing to filter the water as the pump is struggling to pull in a large volume of water through a return jet 16" below the water line, and then send it back out through one clean water return jet. It's designed for a large volume for intake from the skimmer, and designed to return clean water via 2 jets, not one. DOH!
So i just got off the phone with the management company and they are going to call the pool company. Ok, thats being taken care of.
Last night the management company drops off 2 five gallon jugs of shock, and a big tub of a sodium bicarbonate thing to bring up the ph. I dump in one jug of shock and sprinkle the entire contents of the baking soda stuff into the pool. Per the management company, we wait 2 days and dump the second shock jug into it.
Here is my next issue. So the pool is filled with tadpoles and frogs. So i go out there this morning and start skimming to get rid of leaves and animals, moving or otherwise. Well, i take off the cover to the skimmer, and i find this in the skimmer. It just barely fits.
Naturally, the girlfriend pokes it out towards the skimmer entrance, i snag the snapper with the net, and dump it into the creek down the hill next to the house where it came from.
Here is where the real problem starts. I start skimming the top for leaves and in 10 minutes, the floaters are gone. Next i start scraping the bottom. The nightmare begins. I filled this large wheel barrow up in 30 minutes, and there is NO END in sight. The pool is roughly 20'x30'? And what you see is only 30 minutes of the 3 foot shallow end. The drop starts 6 feet towards the deep end and i fear the worst is down there.
It smells horrible, of course it does, it's decomposing leaves, tadpoles, and who knows what else.
Here are a couple pics to show you what we are dealing with.
From shallow end.
From the deep end.
So the problem is, once the filter is hooked up correctly, it will take a team of ten guys working 8 hour shifts, about a week to skim out the several years of decomposing matter and who knows what else down there. If i bring this up to the management company, they will relay the info to the owners who may ditch the idea of opening the pool all together.
My assumption at this point is that the owners figured that the house is worth more in rent with a working pool. And since we volunteered to try to open it, we are the guinea pigs to see if we can.
The issue is, even if i dump a dozen five gallon jugs of shock in the pool, it's not gonna help the years of decaying matter at the bottom of the pool.
I considered renting a trash pump and having at it but this isn't my property and i'm just the boyfriend trying to help.
For those who have done this before, is my only option to drain the entire pool with a trash pump and refill with fresh water?
If thats the case, the management company will have to step in and take over.
Can anyone help who has done this before please ?
Thanks !
