New Used Pool

A couple of weeks ago Karrie and I bought a used pool on Craigslist.  It was one of those bubble pools that doesn't have a frame, just a vinyl liner.  It came with everything we needed, including a heavy duty sand filter, rather then the cheaper cartridge filter.  The guy who we bought it from said it had a couple of tiny holes, but he gave us a kit to patch them.

He also said that it was a 15 foot pool that was 3.5 feet deep.  We didn't realize until we opened it that it was an 18 foot pool that was 4 feet deep.  That was fine with us though, brand new they are usually $450.

There was already a big ring of raised dirt in our backyard from where the previous home owner had a pool.  We wanted to put the pool more by the fence, that way it would be in the sun longer and away from the overhanging tree.  But the ground wasn't level, so we just put it where the old pool had been.  This turned out to be a mistake for several different reasons.

After an hour of filling we realized that the 18 foot pool was way bigger then the level ring of dirt.  But thinking it would be ok we kept filling.  10 hours of constant hose filling later and we were only 75% full, but we already realized we had a problem.

Lets just say that next we we will be doing 2 things before setting up the pool.  First is to trim lots of branches from the big tree.  The pool only gets sun from 2pm to 7pm.  Any time outside of that and it's in the shade.  The temperature ranges between 62 and 68 degrees, which is really cold.  Also we found out that 8 billion seeds fall from that tree in early June.  It was full of these seeds every day no matter how much we cleaned it.  The second thing we will be doing next year is leveling the ground.  Because the pool was overhanging the dirt ring, the low side was stretched and the pressure wasn't even on all wall sides.  It's not the end of the world but it looks like it could capsize on that side.

It took us a few days to figure out the pump and sand filter setup.  It came with these strange 1-way valves that screwed into the pool sidewalls.  Once i figured out how to let the water freely flow in the right direction it works fine.  This was us going over all the instructions after we got it home.

We are looking forward to some sunny 85 degree days so that we can enjoy the pool.  So far it's been a ratio of 10:1 of cleaning to swimming.