Muddy Waters

Our pool construction was completed so late last fall (October!) that we didn't even turn on the pump or the heater. It would've cost a fortune to heat all that water and, frankly, when it's chilly and rainy out, who feels like swimming? Not I!

So we covered it with a big, blue tarp to keep the leaves and rain out, and we let it be. Come spring, we drained all the melted snow and ice off of the pool cover, and this is what we saw.

Steve dropped a brick onto the tarp in the deep end,
so that he could syphon off as much water as possible
before removing the cover.

It was still too cold to open the pool, so we focused on getting the terraces and gardens done. We're still plodding away at those. Finally, after a miserably rainy May, June brought some sunshine with it, so we pulled off the cover. This is what we were greeted with:

We accidentally spilled much of the contents of the cover
- including the brick - into the pool. Plus more leaves and pollen fell.
(The hose is topping up the water. It took HOURS.
Good thing we don't live in Barrhaven where there is a water ban in effect.)

There is so much dirt and algae in the water
that it is opaque in the deep end.

A visit to the pool company ($250) and two days of chemical blasting later, and the pool looked like this.

The algae are dead, but are suspended in the water, so it is
still so cloudy that you can't see the bottom, but at least it's not green.

A full series of chemical treatments - over the course of a week - and the water now looks like this:

Look: you can see the bottom (occluded by the reflection and still a little cloudy).
In fact, you can see the brick that fell off the protective tarp into the pool.

By the way, the water isn't actually blue; it only looks that way because of the blue liner and the reflection of the sky.

So far, it is not heated, but Emily has been in swimming. I'm still waiting for a sunny day when I happen to be in town. Then we need to clear all the work equipment off the patio so we can have a PARTY!