I’ve written about my redneck pool before in an article that went viral on Reddit, namely because a select group decided the story of me running out to buy a $200 above ground pool at Target for my visiting nieces was tantamount to buying them matching Bentleys. So fair warning: While I do not buy anything in this redneck pool saga, I do mention owning a Wet-Dry Vac. I hope that isn’t a problem.
Every year Mike and I take down our redneck pool for winter and put it back up in the spring, screaming and cursing at each other like we do every project.
Me: I can’t connect Tube A to Tube B if you’re f’ing around with Tube C! Who DOES THAT??
This year, we thought we get crafty and leave it up after Googling ways to winterize it. We drained half the water, filled it full of anti-freeze type stuff and put a cover on it.
Mike: There’s water on the pool cover.
Me: It rained.
Mike: We should go get it off of there.
Me: How? We can’t do that every time it rains.
Mike: A leaf just fell on the pool.
Me: IT’S AUTUMN
Mike: Another leaf. Oh my god. I think I just saw a stick. *moan*
By January, Mike had fallen into a depression deeper than when the butcher that sold wine a block from our house went out of business.
By May, we had a pool cover filled with debris and dark murky water. I can only guess how many super villains we spawned from those depths.
The elusive Mike in waders. Or possibly Big Foot.
Mike: A dude dripping radioactive algae in black spandex just climbed out of the pool. *moan*
Ultimately, there was no way to pull the cover off without all the accumulation falling into the clean “winterized” water beneath.
To remove the top water, I suggested a siphon. Mike came up with the brilliant idea of using a WetVac to suck the water out, then once it got going, I’d yank the hose off the Vac and the siphon would continue to flow. We felt like Mr. Wizard, Bill Nye the Science Guy and the dudes from Myth Busters had had an orgy and we were their genius offspring.
But our genius siphon only worked until about 3 inches of water on the cover, which is still a ton of water.
We had to drain the pool.
We collapsed one side (the low side because our pool water always has a jaunty list to the back) and put rocks on the lip to hold it down and let the water escape. Once it got too low for that, I used patio pavers to create a ramp from the inside of the pool pointing out, so a person (Mike) could push the water up the ramp and out of the pool with a circus broom.
Suspecting we had a nuclear clean up in our future, we’d borrowed a pair of waders from my father, who is a retired lobster fisherman, so he has things like waders and claw rubber-banders and Gorton’s Fisherman Fan-zines laying around. Mike put on the waders but refused to let me photograph him. I did get one photo though. That is either Mike in waders or possibly Sasquatch. Same foot size, either way.
So a ton of leaves, some sort of staph infection and a slow but certain transformation into Swamp Thing later, ta da!
Don’t tell the nieces. We’ll wait until they’re in the pool and then say “Hey, right where you’re standing is where we found the dead bird! Neat!”
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