Who needs kids? I have a pool!
Well, I put a bunch of miles on my car this weekend, as you know. I got back about 7:30pm from the long journey. When I got home, I discovered the house in the same condition I left it, which was good. (I had managed to do the laundry and wash the dishes prior to leaving to things stayed clean in my absence.) The pool however, was a different matter.
Who needs kids? Just get a pool!
This silly pool is turning into my surrogate child. It doesn't like to be left unattended and it seems to get into trouble if you don't pay it at least a little attention every day. I think it was sulking after two weekends of my absence. The day before I left I had been putting water in the pool, then disconnected the upper of the two hoses so I could water the flowers. I didn't pay much attention to the lower hose. This was where I went wrong. You see I had left the distant end of the hose in the pool, which is fine and dandy. Then I left the unconnected hose on the ground, which is also fine and dandy. Except that the end of the hose on the ground was lower than the end of the hose in the pool. That was where physics took over. You see, there was no air introduced into the hose, so it acted like a siphon. And slowly but surely siphoned about 15,000 gallons of water out of the pool into the lawn.
I discovered this late last night when I had a look out the back door just to see if the pool was still there. What I observed in the faint light from the porch light was that the pool steps were far more visible than they should have been. This was intriguing enough to merit a walk out to pool side. As I got up to the pool, the ground seemed rather soft and wet, but as it had been raining on the drive down, that didn't seem particularly remarkable. Until I realized that the reason the pool steps were more visible than usual was because THE WATER WAS MISSING. Not all of the water, but all but about 18 inches of it. That was when the squelching suddenly made more sense. It wasn't from the rain at all. It was from my pool.
Sigh.
What makes this even more absurd is that I had intended to partially drain the pool this week and close it for the winter. Now I have to completely fill it so that I can vacuum it and treat the water, then drain it partially so I can close it for the winter. Sigh. On the other hand, the water company is unlikely to go bankrupt this month thanks to my soon to be rather large demand on the water supply.
Now I can only hope that my pool doesn't become a teenager, do drugs or want to go to college. I don't think I could handle that.
Who needs kids? Just get a pool!
This silly pool is turning into my surrogate child. It doesn't like to be left unattended and it seems to get into trouble if you don't pay it at least a little attention every day. I think it was sulking after two weekends of my absence. The day before I left I had been putting water in the pool, then disconnected the upper of the two hoses so I could water the flowers. I didn't pay much attention to the lower hose. This was where I went wrong. You see I had left the distant end of the hose in the pool, which is fine and dandy. Then I left the unconnected hose on the ground, which is also fine and dandy. Except that the end of the hose on the ground was lower than the end of the hose in the pool. That was where physics took over. You see, there was no air introduced into the hose, so it acted like a siphon. And slowly but surely siphoned about 15,000 gallons of water out of the pool into the lawn.
I discovered this late last night when I had a look out the back door just to see if the pool was still there. What I observed in the faint light from the porch light was that the pool steps were far more visible than they should have been. This was intriguing enough to merit a walk out to pool side. As I got up to the pool, the ground seemed rather soft and wet, but as it had been raining on the drive down, that didn't seem particularly remarkable. Until I realized that the reason the pool steps were more visible than usual was because THE WATER WAS MISSING. Not all of the water, but all but about 18 inches of it. That was when the squelching suddenly made more sense. It wasn't from the rain at all. It was from my pool.
Sigh.
What makes this even more absurd is that I had intended to partially drain the pool this week and close it for the winter. Now I have to completely fill it so that I can vacuum it and treat the water, then drain it partially so I can close it for the winter. Sigh. On the other hand, the water company is unlikely to go bankrupt this month thanks to my soon to be rather large demand on the water supply.
Now I can only hope that my pool doesn't become a teenager, do drugs or want to go to college. I don't think I could handle that.
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