The pool's been getting grimmer and grimmer all winter long. I knew the sand needed replacing in the filter, but then the filter was starting to rust through, so I figured I'd wait until winter was over and then change it. The pool guy kept reminding me and I finally did it. I found the filter I wanted online pretty cheap and he matched the price which was nice (except for sales tax) and he delivered it, but I had to install it.
It's powered by diatomaceous earth and I found out I needed to get 6lbs of that before I could install it. So that put me back a day. There was a need to hurry you see since we had a pool play date planned with a classmate of my daughter on Sunday. I finally got it installed on Friday night, and mixed up the DE and coated the filter and had it running all night long. Here's a picture of the new filter. The pool works at a much lower pressure than it used to with the sand filter, this will put less strain on the motor so that makes me happy.
In the morning the pool was blue! It was amazing. I did some quick vacuuming up of some green algae on the bottom and it's been spotless ever since. I'm delighted!There's a few more pictures of the old pool pump area (with a broken skimmer pump, old crappy sand filter) and the new area and a shot of inside the old sand filter over in the Photo Gallery.
It was also a bumper weekend for wildlife too. When I went to check on the pool and the filter around bedtime it was already dark and I saw a big alligator lizard under a plant. Then I saw a huge king snake that must have been over 18 inches long. Just slinking along across our driveway. Also last week I found a huge black widow spider in the garage, just hanging out on one of the cabinet doors. The spiders have been going crazy recently with the super hot weather, and heading into the house, we've chucked out lots this week. We catch and release ALL spiders around here, even the black widows. We also finally got a pretty o.k. picture of a blue tailed skink, he was hanging out by the back door in the sun.This afternoon I patched a few holes in the driveway and while I was doing it there was another 2ft long king snake on the hill by the driveway, he even rattled his tail at me! When I got wifey to come look at him she noticed there were TWO of them on the same hill and they weren't the same one we'd seen the other night!
