Friday Frustrations----OR

#poolsarethebiggestmoneypits!Ugh!WTF!!

(I need to insert here that I wrote this post a few weeks ago before I had my computer issues.)

This all happened Saturday afternoon. We had been enjoying the day in the pool with the family. When everyone got out—about 4, Butch said the water level looked really low. Then we noticed the noise that means the water level is below the skimmers—which means it could burn up the pump—or so we’ve been warned. 

We thought our pool pump had blown up (or at least I did) when we saw it. Water was shooting up like Old Faithful! We were not happy with our pool guy as we could not reach him via phone, text or email. You wouldn’t believe all the switches, levers and valves there are—and none seemed to shut the pool off. I was a nervous wreck that Butch was standing ankle deep in water with wires running everywhere! Butch finally cut off the power and the geyser stopped, but water still kept pouring out. Think of your tap fully open—that’s how much water was still pouring out. We lost almost a third of the pool water in 18 hours. Butch had tried everything to get it to stop. Finally, on Sunday afternoon, he got down to see if he could figure out where exactly the water was coming from. That’s when he noticed one more lever—underneath. He turned that and voila’ it stopped running. Happy Father’s Day! Exactly how you want to spend your one day!

Can you see all those levers and handles? AND all those electrical wires? Now you know why I was freaked out when Butch was standing in 5 inches of water---barefooted too (not that rubber soled shoes would have helped anyway). Still, you hear about freak accidents all the time. Well, this was tempting fate in my book!

 When he couldn't get the water to stop pouring out, he tried duct tape. It didn't work.

Our pool guy didn’t call until Monday morning and said he’d get by in the next couple of days. DAYS! OMGosh! Of course we weren’t happy about that. This guy is new and I really liked him. Over the course of 23 years, we’ve had 9 different pool companies. They are all pretty good until they aren’t! This guy is a small business with only one worker. He only takes 40 pools so he can keep his service top notch. Well, we weren’t happy. But I’ve already had the experience of trying to find a pool company in the middle of summer— impossible as they have their summer schedules set.

Mike our pool guy, finally came out Tuesday afternoon. Butch went out to talk to him. I was so afraid that he would tick the guy off and then we’d really be up a creek (or swimming pool). When he came in, he was calmed down. Our pool guy said that all the numbers we called were his business numbers. He said that he’s so busy that he would go crazy if he answered calls all weekend, so he doesn’t. He offered to give Butch his personal phone number, but Butch declined. We get it. After all, the guy does have a family and we’re just talking “first world problems.” At least now we know how to turn off the pool.

Turns out, our pool blew a gasket. Yeah, that simple. Or maybe not. We haven’t gotten the bill yet—or for the water for that matter! I called the water company and the gal said we still have to pay for the water. As if our water bills weren’t already outrageous. You cannot even guess!

It has taken nearly 3 weeks to get the part. We were still able to use the pool, but it wasn't as clean as we like. We're back in business now, so we'll keep our fingers crossed. This money pit is not done with us yet!

Steph calls these "boojey" problems. You know---as in the French term "bourgeosie" meaning a sociologically defined class, especially in contemporary times, referring to people with a certain cultural and financial capital belonging to the middle or upper stratum of the middle class.

Is that a bad thing?