Opening the Pool too early and a hole in the pool liner.

After last year everything seems to need to be done early and too excess at least a little bit. We had the pool open last year, but this year I and at least Nastia needed the pool open early. I'd wanted to open it the end of April. It was cold and very unsummerey. Teri commited the coup de gras (this time I used it correctly, not like the

previous blog entry) when she said United Water had most likely already read the meters and we'd get charged summer rates anyway, so I waited. Mid May can sometime, at least over the last few year be unpredictable. Some days are nice and warm, otehrs a little cold. I opened the pool mid May on a weekend. The neighbors maple tree was stil dropping polynoses (When I was young,we called them helicopters) I thought, no big deal, I'll clean them out after I patch the hole in the pool and fill it up.I'm sure the hole is in the floor of the pool. I clean all of the

leaves out of the pool and begin to look for the hole. I walk the pool sure I'll find it at any moment. I don't. To prevent the liner from shrinking Teri says we should fill the pool up. We fill the pool up about three quarter of the way. There is a shortage of chlorine so I don't feel the need to fill the pool all the way up and put chlorine in it. Big mistake, also the temperature drops from the upper 80's to a high in the low 50's for several days. The polynoses continue to fall into the pool and I don't have a skimmer to clean them out. Yesterday I drain the pool, clean the polynoses out and again look for the hole in the pool. Later in the day Nastia comes to help. I put about six inches of water in the pool to stop the liner from shrinking. Nastia rolls up her pants legs and climbes into the icy cold water. She tries to keep her pants dry, but does not succeed when she sits down oh her legs. After that she goes on her hands and knees to look for the hole. After about half an

hour she too has had it. We let the water settle and I drop food dye into the water and it shows nothing. That was it for the day. The next two days it was hot and humid. Late in the day we got thunder storms, so little was done on the pool. Friday, the level of the water had not gone down. So I turned the hose on again and added some more water. I forgot it was on so I called Elena who was still asleep at home asking he rto turn teh water off before she left. I also texted Nastia to make sure the water was off when she got home at around 2:30 from work. THe pool water level as of Saturday morning is about six to eight inches from the water mark where the water was over the winter. The level hasn't dropped. I put a chalk mark on the line and it looks good. More water goes in it later today. I will add more to this post until the pool is up and patched. //