Fun With Pools

There I was at work today, just after finishing my lunch, when I saw that I had a voicemail message, as well as an e-mail from someone I work with, sporting the Subject of "Pool Trouble."

It turned out that we'd had a seal break on the PVC pipe coming out of the pool heater, such that water had been gushing out onto our lawn near the heater late this morning. Fortunately for us, the next door neighbour heard the water from his yard, and was smart and considerate enough to jump over our fence and come turn off our pump. We only lost a few inches of water (equal to several hours of hose-running, to replace it) before he saved the day. Then he tried to figure out how to get ahold of Vicki or me, since all they had was our home phone #. Since one of their children was in the same class as the child of one of our work-friends, that eventually lead to me at work. After a sweltering bike ride home in the high heat of the day (31 degrees, feeling like 35) I arrived to survey the situation and try to arrange to get someone to come and re-seal the pipe.

I'd called three different places - including the company who'd installed the heater, six years ago, with the apparently-poor seal in it, who told me they would get here "sometime this week" - when I got lucky once again. The same neighbour had had a couple pool repair guys over to look at his problem - his pool liner was pulling away from the edge - and he asked me I wanted to have them look at the pipe. Happy not to have to wait for "sometime this week" I jumped at the chance. A couple hours later - after they left to go find a proper replacement part, since the original heater installers hadn't used the right one - they'd sealed it up and I was able to run the pump once again. Another $80 out of the house-emergency fund - in addition to the $60 on Friday for the PS/3 situation - and we were all settled up.

Throughout all this, Vicki was incommunicado as she'd gone to a Women's Canadian Club meeting and had forgotten to turn her cellphone on. Sometimes it's a lonely battle I fight...