After recovering all day on Sunday from our exertions at the Master Gardeners Conference, it was time to get on with matters domestic. Mostly at the back of the house.
Whilst good progress was made on hard landscaping during last week, there wasn’t any progress on actually finishing the pool. We eventually found out why. Alas, the daughter of the plasterer is in the Childrens’ Hospital in intensive care with spinal problems. No wonder the poor man is distracted.
But, as promised, he and his crew arrived on Friday morning (before the dawning light had even start to show colours) and set to work with gusto. By midday, they were clearing up, and were off to work on another pool for the afternoon. The result was a disappointing grey colour, as we had been warned. The crew returned at 7am on Saturday to wash the pool with acid, to expose the embedded grit material in the coating. After cleaning up and pumping out the wash water, they were off, leaving two hoses in the pool to start the real measure of progress, filling the pool.
Filling a pool for the first time is a sensitive task. You don’t want to fill the pool too quickly, but the filling must not stop under any circumstances. We have been given dire warnings about this- if it stops, an indelible ring round the pool, like the ring round a bath (no, not your bath, I am sure), will result. After two hours there had been a little progress, but not as much as we expected. A detailed investigation showed that the hose run all the way to our wellhead was not producing any water – disaster.
I investigated in detail and found that the hose was leaking at a coupling. Immediate repairs were conducted but still no water emerged. Finally, I discovered that there was a valve inside the inline filter at the end of the hose, and it was closed. Open valve, water flowing, even the spray from the leak down the hose almost stopped. At this rate we would have to stay up late on Saturday night to stop the filling once the pool was properly full.
One small triumph this week. We have been pestered by a voracious squirrel raiding the bird feeders, chasing off the songbirds and making a real mess scattering birdseed everywhere. We had tried to discourage the squirrel by adding a good dose of chili pepper to the seed, to no avail. Maybe he is an immigrant Mexican squirrel who liked his food with a kick. We have tried moving and raising the bird feeders, to no avail. Finally, on Saturday we found an optimum height which was out of reach of a climbing jumping squirrel, but still practical for topping up the feeders. The birds are really happy (and the squirrel prowls about looking really fed up).