The Holtsville Swamp

Yard work is beginning to get the better of me.  Upon uncovering our pool for the season, we found out there was a ton of leaves and debris sitting at the bottom and the water was black.  It's highly likely that it wasn't winterized properly. Throughout Memorial Day weekend, I was alternately scooping leaves and branches out of the pool with the skimmer and (later) a leaf rake attachment I got at Lowe's, and running the filter constantly.  We've gone through 35 lbs. of diatomite just sucking all the yucky algae and swampy stuff out of the pool.  At first, the filter would run for 20 minutes, get clogged and require backwashing.  As of this morning, it's clear enough to see the bottom, the water went from black to green to milky green to somewhat clear, and I can still see tons of leaves in the deep end.  At least now we can run the filter for 1-2 hours before it gets fully clogged again.

My pool guy says I need to do this until the water is clear, and nothing is going to clear the water up short of draining the pool.  I'd rather not dump over 20,000 gallons of water into my yard, so I'm stuck filtering and backwashing.  Lather, rinse, repeat until the damned thing is ready for the next round of chemicals that will need to be dumped into it.

On top of that, this weekend's ambitious project is getting the central air conditioning running again.  Thankfully, I have the assistance of my soon-to-be brother in law and his electrician friend.  Otherwise I'd be up a creek.