Clean-up Day

The late great dust storm left an astonishing mess. And nice timing: The day I bring home 150 student papers to grade (yes!), I get distracted by a good four hours of shoveling mud out of the pool, two trips to the pool shop to keep Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner staggering along (to the tune of $70), an hour of scraping dust up off the floors…my god.

I’m so tired I’m physically sick.

It’s 9:30, I have another 75 papers to read between now and 6:15 tomorrow morning, and I give UP. There’s just no way I’m going to get through all that stuff.

Decided to opt dusting the furniture (and the baseboards, and the walls, and the cabinetry, and the appliances, and the lampshades, and the fans, and…) in favor of microfiber-ragging up the tiles and vacuuming the garage floor, since they were gritty underfoot. There’s so much dust in the air, it will take several days for it to settle out. But settle it will: all over the furniture, the baseboards, the walls, the etc.

So much dirt is still hanging in the atmosphere that, as I was driving up to campus this morning, it was shrouding the hilltops like fog or low-flying clouds. But neither fog nor cloud is what this stuff is. If you linger outdoors, a layer of fine, scratchy grit settles on your skin. Work up a sweat (as I spent the entire afternoon doing), lick your lips, and along with the salt you get a mouthful of crunchy stuff.

So I figured it would be better to just wait until it all settles out than to clean and then have to clean again.

But the pool: that had to be dealt with. What a mess!

Looked like someone had dumped about half a wheelbarrow of dirt in there. Mud rippled across the bottom like sand at the seashore, dusted the walls, piled up in a dune at the deep end.

Started working at dawn, as soon as there was just enough light to grope around. So much dirt lay on the bottom that I didn’t see the wads of devil pods under there. Ran the pump long enough to skim off the floating debris; then pulled out the skimmer basket, dipped Harvey in the drink, and plugged him in.

Took about 10 minutes to bring him to a dead stop. And to push the filter’s pressure gauge to 22 psi.

Backwashed, recharged the filter. Pulled Harvey out and found he was gagging on devil pods and strappy leaves. Put him in the back of the car.

On the way home from the interminable classes, took him by Leslie’s. The manager discombobulated him, cleaned him out, replaced a gear box (which I doubt needed to be replaced…I don’t trust that guy), and charged me $70. Another unexpected, unaffordable little surprise bill.

Back at the house, attached the bonnet to the garden hose, sucked all the pods and other debris off the bottom, put a spray attachment on the hose and swept down the walls as best as I could, reattached the rejuvenated Harvey. He waddled s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y across the bottom, barely moving. Something wrong, but not having time to think about it, decided to let him run a few hours while I graded papers.

Read one batch. Looked back out there: Harvey is at another dead stop.

Haul him out of the pool, schlep him back to Leslie’s. Guy says there’s really nothing wrong with Harvey that another $90 repair wouldn’t fix. He says probably the filter is clogged and needs to be backwashed.

I say I’ve already backwashed this morning.

He says one of his customers had to backwash three times.

Shit.

I plod back to the house. PSI is only 12 pounds or so…about normal. The filter does not need to be backwashed.

So I attach the manual vacuum to the hose, after engaging in a lengthy fight with the in-line leaf catcher, one of the most annoying inventions known to pool-going humankind. Clog the vacuum hose. Get it working. Takes about an hour to vacuum the mud off the walls and floor.

By then, yes, the filter indeed is straining again.

Backwash thoroughly. Run and run and run the water into the alley until it finally starts to run clean.

By now I’ve drained the pool almost to the skimmer basket. When I go to pour some DE in there to recharge the filter, the pump starts to cavitate.

Shit, shit, shee-ut!

Abort, abort abort! Shut down the pump before it sucks too much air in. Drop the hose in the pool and let it run full-bore, about 45 minutes.

Fire up the pump again. Bleed off the air. It’s running OK…at 15 PSI.

Ducky.

This means that before long (as in probably less than a week) the Leslie’s service dude is gonna have to come out here and take the whole damn thing apart, haul the heavy filter out to the alley, deconstruct it, wash all the filter pads (illegally in the alley), put it all back together, and recharge it.

I just had that done a month ago. It costs $120. One shouldn’t have to do that kind of procedure more often than every six months to a year.

So now we have $120 + $70; that would be another $190 this month, on top of the various other unexpected nasty bills that are rolling in while I have no income.

All told, I’d say I worked about four hours cleaning the pool, starting at 4:30 a.m. An hour on the house. Four hours of standing in front of a classroom starting at 7:00 a.m. Ninety minutes or two hours driving back and forth and dickering with the Leslie’s store. And I didn’t keep track of the time spent reading the 75 papers I’ve managed to get through.

Ugh. Life in Paradise!