Last year, shortly after we opened our pool, the skimmer stopped working.

I went to our friendly neighborhood pool store where they immediately recognized my problem and said they could fix it. I'd have to wait a little, but they'd get to it.

Apparently over time the plastic tubing for the skimmer clogs itself after years and years of being exposed to chlorine. It was a common problem for pools of my vintage and fixing it shouldn't be that much of an issue.

After spending the summer skimming the pool by hand and swimming with bugs, the problem turned out to be getting the not so friendly (anymore) pool store out to fix it. It was always one excuse after the other. I tried other places, but got similar excuses and flat out refusals (job too small or job too big usually). This spring I went back to the pool store to start the excuse game over again.

In the meantime I got a postcard in the mail form some pool restoration place I'd never heard of. I figured what the hell, I'd give them a call. At first I got the same "oh yeah chlorine gets in there... overtime... done many of these..." routine, but the difference was the "I'll be out there Thursday to take a look"  Huh?

So he came out and looked, gave an estimate, came back a week later and started making a mess. I don't care how big a mess he makes as long as it works and I can use my pool this summer.

Originally he was thinking he'd have to tear up the concrete all the way to the outside. Now he has a plan to drive the new plumbing under the deck from the outside.

They dug a new trench to run the new line. At least this one is accessible if there's a problem in the future.

May 6, 2009

The skimmer fix we paid for didn't work. When we tried closing the pool at the end of last season, we couldn't get the pump to suck all the water out of the skimmer, so I started digging. I dug up the pipes near where he drove them under the deck. The closer I got to the deck, the more wet and finally soggy the dirt got. I could only surmise that the pipe he'd driven under the deck was cracked, leaking and not sealed enough for the pump to pump the water out. We covered it up and left it for the following season.

We tried calling the guy that did the work to no avail. He took the money and ran.

I never really liked the work he did anyway.

My Dad arrived Wednesday May 6th and we went right to work busting out the skimmer.