Ugh, had a bad day today, pool-wise. I can't imagine this happening to anyone else, but I'll share anyway, just in case. As it turns out, I am not superhuman after all. Sorry to break it to you.
Because I cannot clean my filter cartridges without getting completely drenched, head to toe, I stall this nasty chore until the first hot day in Spring. Well, today was it, we hit 102°! So I readied my pad for the filter purge by first creating a towel dam between my filter's plug and a drain I'm lucky enough to have in the middle of my pad, like so:
Getting at the plug is frustratingly awkward, but I was getting it loose, slowly but surely. If any of you have done this, you'll remember the force and volume of the water released when that plug comes free. Unfortunately, I didn't. As the water came flooding out, I reacted to how it was pushing the towel dam out of place. I reached to hold it down and lost track of the plug. That's all it took. By then, the water was draining down the hole, creating a decent suction. The flood waters took hold of the plug, steered it right to the drain (Dang dam), and the drain sucked it right down. I barely had time to register what happened, and no time at all to even try and reach for the plug. Swoosh, it was gone.
Some amount of swearing and stomping around and flashlighting later revealed the truth. It wasn't going to be a challenge to retrieve it from some crook in the drain piping, no, it was probably already at the sewage treatment plant by then. So I went inside, ordered a Pentair replacement for delivery May 14 - May 16, and a knockoff from Amazon that might arrive as early as Monday. The knockoff didn't get great reviews, or I'd have ordered two, but I went OEM instead but got the cheapie one because it could get here sooner. Oh well, lesson learned, and I'll only be down tomorrow (unless USPS gets involved, that is).
So I'll use tomorrow to do the drain I need to do, to lower my CH a bit. That would have cost me a day of pumping anyway, so this will all work out well enough. I'll use my backup sump pump to drain some water, then use it to circulate some liquid chlorine until the new plug gets here.
Takeaways:
- I try to convince people to have a spare sump pump on hand for pool pad shutdown emergencies. Well... here's a great example of why.
- Every plumber or DIYer knows NOT to work above a drain without making sure you can't drop anything you're working on into it. Duh!! (How many times do I have learn this?!)
- Since all it takes to shut down your pool pad for a few days is losing or mangling your filter plug, maybe having a back up in stock is prudent. I'll have one now.
That all said, I did get my filters cleaned. It was surprisingly easy. They had a lot of particulate gunk, but nothing staining the media, it all rinsed off, with just water, as fast as I've ever done it. And my new filter washing stand extender worked better than expected. A few of you might remember
this post, from last year. I fabricated the extender after I cleaned the filters last year, so I didn't get to test it out until today! It worked really well, and made this back-breaking chore much less back-breaking.
As I've mentioned before, I'm not going to let my CH-rise year after year, and only fix it after it becomes unmanageable, by draining half my pool. Instead, I'll drain just a few inches once a year, every year, to keep my CH more stable and to keep from having to empty my pool more than I need to. Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment of "Oh Geez, What Did Dirk Do This Time!?"
www.troublefreepool.com
hope your new fan fixes it right up.
