06/13/2026
Yesterday was a get it done Friday for sure. Went to pick up my helper, while I was waiting for him to wake up I did some cleaning of his mom’s pool. Then I went to drop off some chemicals to one of my regular chemicals, that turned into cleaning cover, then cleaning pool. Then of course chat with her for a bit. After that I went to a families house that constructed their own pool. He did everything very well, except for when it came to doing cut ins. Long story short I was able to get it patched and cut in the main drains. They are filling it with their garden hose, so it will be a few days before I can return to complete cut ins. The little daughter is cute as all get out, and is very excited to finally get to swim. That family is why I love working on pools, seeing the smiles and feeling the good energy is what it’s all about. After that I returned to an above ground pool that we opened, one of the hose clamps failed and half the pool drained. If that wasn’t bad enough after she shut the system off, the rest of the water drained through the main drain. My mistake was not putting two hose clamps on each connection, I wanted too but there were zero hose clamps in the van. The previous year she battled algae and finally discovered the stairs were the culprit. My solution to this problem is adding another return by the stairs to help circulation. In order to do that we needed to drain water below where I wanted the return. Coincidentally the pool did that for me, homeowner didn’t want to do this due to lack of funds. Me being me I said you know you really need this, so I told her if you pay for the materials I’ll just do it for free. While I was there I noticed the return fitting I had was no good so I gave the hole cut, new fitting will be here soon. Good thing the return can be added with water. To sweeten the pot I recommended her to get pillow stuffing and a 5 gallon bucket. So I drilled some holes in it, stuffed it, and ratchet strapped the bucket lid on.