Owning a home with a Pool, is it easy?

I had a pool installed at my home 3 years ago, and I thought, how hard could it be? Really? Its just water in a big bucket! I can handle this! Well 3 years later I have found that I am a chemist, managing chemicals and water balance and in some cases it was tougher than I would imagine. 

So at the end of last year (October 2013) I had a leak in my liner, It happened when I took the stairs out of my pool but I didn't realize it until late fall. My pool first leaked all of the water, and then after that the cover blew off leaving my entire pool exposed over the winter. In May 2014 I finally had to take a good look and below you can see my pool in its worst condition ever. I never thought I would get my pool back to normal. 

My neighbor told me about a product that could patch the wall liner while underwater, which I could not believe. 

Before you start you need a little piece of sandpaper to rough the backside of a piece of vinyl pool liner and make sure that its cut in a round shape.

You take the piece of vinyl liner and paste the stuff on it.

Put the vinyl piece on the hole and hold for a few minutes and wait 24 hours. After that fill up the water just over the hole to make sure no bubbles come out and that there is no water coming out. Then you can fill the pool up! 

But wait, you added a nice wood deck for the pool? Well every other year we have had to stain the deck to keep the water repelling and make sure the wood is smooth and no splinters! Here's where having kids really helps! HAHA!

So after the pool was filled it became very cloudy. We ran the filter 24 hours a day for a week but it couldn't break through the phosphates in the water (Tiny particles suspended by the water). As you can see below. You couldn't see the bottom so we grabbed a bottle of PhosAway and used our hose and attached a bottle of the stuff and sprayed on the pool. Shut off the filter and let it stand for 2 days. The pool was clear except for these small balls (I didn't take a picture - sorry!) and then you use your pool vacuum but you don't use the filter you have to vacuum to waste which was very difficult but we got it done!

So here I am vacuuming the pool and as you can see how clear it really is.

Much better looking than 2 months ago!