"We should get a pool," I said.
"It'll be fun," I said.
Little did we know what we were in for...
This pool has a name. It's a four letter word.
It all started on a beautiful summer's day. The weather was perfect, the location was perfect, and how hard could setting up a pool really be???
"Let's get it up before Dad gets home from golf!" I told the kids. This is usually how my bad ideas start, but the excitement on the kids' faces was priceless. We were determined to "surprise" Dad. We always love to "surprise" Dad!
With the help of the kids, we were able to get the pool up in about a half hour and begin filling it. Since we have well water, I did countless of hours of research and purchased a filter to go on the end of the hose to filter out the iron so our pool will be nice and clear from the get-go. There's not going to be any iron in our pool. It will be perfect.
The next day, as the pool was 3/4 of the way full, we noticed that it was very much lopsided and uneven -- to the point where it was a bit of a safety hazard. We had no option other than to drain the 7,000 gallons of water. And since the hose filter we bought was disposable (only good for 8,000 gallons of water), we had to purchase another one to ensure there wouldn't be iron in the pool.
As we waited for the new hose filter to arrive, we drained the pool, dug and pushed more dirt, leveled as best as we could, and got it right where we wanted it. Once we got the filter, we began filling the pool again with even more anticipation and excitement.
The moment was here. Our crystal clear pool was full and so inviting. However, we had to shock it. This would be the true test to see if our hose filter worked. So I added the shock in the evening and tossed and turned all night hoping that the filter did as promised.
When I woke up, I ran out to the pool as fast as I could KNOWING that it was still going to be blue. Much to my disappointment, this is what I found:
Back to the drawing board to now figure out how to get MASSIVE amounts of iron out of our pool. After hours and hours of more research trying to find the EASIEST and QUICKEST way to get iron out of a pool, I found that using Iron Out (we use this chemical for our water filter/softener in the house) worked for a lot of people, and it's super cheap. We went to the store and got a super-sized jug and gave it a try. Lo and behold, the water began to turn from dark brown to green within minutes. Yes! It worked!
Or so I thought...
Each time we added Iron Out to the pool, it would mask the iron (turning the water blue/green). However, when we would add chlorine, the chlorine would oxidize the iron, which would turn it brown. Each day we were adding more and more Iron Out to the point that the water just began smelling like Iron Out. Ew.
What do we do now? We have 8,000 gallons of water that smells like Iron Out. We are essentially swimming in a big slurry of Iron Out. There is no way to get the Iron Out out of the pool. Unless...we drain it. Again.
Feeling like that is our only option at this point, we drain the pool AGAIN -- causing a river of sorts to run throughout our property.
The next plan of action would be to hook up our in-home iron filter to the outside spigot to fill the pool up with our clean house water. Brilliant! Papa came over, and it was a quick process to connect our softener/filter to the outside spigot. After scrubbing all iron particles off of the pool liner, we were ready to fill it again. We began filling at around 6:00 p.m..
In the morning as the pool was still continuing to fill, Chad noticed that during his shower, the water smelled bad -- like IRON! NOOOO! I rushed outside and shut off the water to the pool. We went into the basement to look at our filter, and sure enough, it was plugged and stopped working from the large amount of water being pumped through it. The filling process would have to be postponed until we could have our filter serviced. *sigh*
After the filter was serviced, we were given specific instructions on how long we can keep the outside hose running to the pool. We were able to finish filling up the pool with clean water; however, we were unsure of how much iron got into the swimming pool from when the filter stopped working. It was time to shock the pool again to see how much iron we were dealing with. Drum roll, please...
The. Same. Thing.
At this point, the chipper shredder may be our next option. Maybe we can recycle the liner and make some nice rain jackets for the kids? I'm starting to lose my marbles. I'm ready to destroy this iron-filled pond.
Back to my research. Hours and hours and hours and hours. I think I've got it. The last method we will try is to keep the chlorine high and filter out the iron using socks, a dolphin vacuum, a five-gallon bucket of towels, and a sump pump. I read about the sock method initially, but it was NOT a quick and easy method, so it was quickly discarded. 🤦. My bad. Chad had the idea of adding the towels with the sump pump to make it quicker. This was literally our last option before tearing it down, so I was willing to give it a few weeks to see what happens. In the mean time, we called it the pond. It was safe to swim in (chemically balanced) but brown. That wasn't going to stop me.
Floating on the pond with all of the filtering contraptions attached:
There was so much iron in the pool that we had to clean the socks, towels, vacuum, and filter out every two hours, and all items were completely saturated with iron.
After four days of continuous filtering and cleaning, you could start to see the bottom! Yay!
After seven days, the water was blue/green!
After about a week and a half of filtering, rinsing, crying, and sweating, the water is CRYSTAL CLEAR and IRON FREE!
Needless to say, we learned a lot as a first-time pool buyer.
Chad's Garage Project -- Barn Wood Accent Wall
(He's doing the entire back wall)
Puzzle Progress
Are we making ANY progress on this puzzle?!?!
Everyone has given up. Everyone but me. The fate of this puzzle lies only in my hands. But all the pieces are blue. All of them. Blue. 😞
Girls' Day!
Ella has all of the pictures on her phone, but it was a FANTASTIC day with my girls! We made tie dye pajama shirts, went swimming, had TV dinners and cookie dough, and watched Clueless.
Donut Delivery to Crete
Dame's Rocket
Stretching with Sophie
Sugar LOVES when Sophie gives her love and "Sophie Food." Sophie fills her bowl with food, fills it halfway with water, takes it to the cabinet, shakes sprinkles over top (with the cap on), pretends to dump in all sorts of things, and mixes it up. Sugar thinks it's the most special food and gobbles it up every time. When I feed her, I fill her bowl with food, halfway with water, and set it down. She doesn't touch it.
First day of work in the books! He loves surprise Runza.
Ongoing Allergies
First Fish of the Year
First Time Driving
"It was easy! Well, after I messed up on my blinker and had to turn around in a driveway and almost hit a mailbox, it was easy." -Ella
First Time on a Motor Bike
Happy Father's Day to a one-of-a-kind, humble, generous, and loving man. Thanks, Honey, for making our dreams come true! 💕
Ready for some volleyball!
Rollerblading
Dead Man's Run Exploration
Many memories of this place from when I was a kid.
We found some backwoods trails.
Sophie was able to skate on them, but Ella still needed to get solid at skating on concrete before trying dirt trails. 😬
We made it 8 miles! Our feet were SORE!
Playing Trash
Sophie doing her exercises under the cherry tree:
Mrs. Robinson's Baby:
