It's been a week since I first posted this thread, and you were all so wonderful about answering my concerns, so I'm sorry I haven't been back on to tell everyone how my skimmer problem was resolved.

As you know, I contacted my sub (via fax on a Sunday night) and asked him to redo the skimmers. He reacted promptly, and I think, professionally. On Monday, the morning after he received the fax, he was on another job, but his wife (who is his scheduler) called me at 9:15 am and said that they were sending his father (who is semi retired and whom he learned the business from) out to look at the skimmers. His father arrived about an hour later. He stood at the side of the pool silently looking across at the skimmers while I talked. At first I was a little nervous because I was expecting an argument. But I never got one. He said almost immediately (and repeatedly after that) that his son would 'put it right'. Not even an hour after that I received another call from his wife saying if he finished the job he was on that day, he would be out to fix the skimmers on Tuesday, but surely by Wednesday. Well, he arrived on Tuesday morning at 7:25am with a jackhammer, two new skimmers, metal rods, etc. and proceeded to blast out the skimmers. We were in the middle of an awful heat wave (101 in the shade and 115 with the heat index), but he kept at it that day and the next and when they were done the new skimmers were installed to Fig Newtons specs: top of the skimmer even with the top of the beam, level side to side and front to back and tied into the beam with metal rods. In other words - he fixed them - and now they look beautiful!

But the proof of the pudding is in how they are working. Fantastic! I didn't realize how poorly the badly leaking and often repaired old ones were functioning until I saw these in action today after we fired up the system. The pull was strong enough to pull my floating thermometer (which wasn't tethered) into the skimmer throat.

So while I was not happy that it happened, I am very pleased with the end result. I am especially pleased with the way in which he responded - quickly and with no arguments and no bad vibes. He simply concentrated on 'putting it right' as his father said.

So thank you one and all for giving this newbie the information I needed to get my problem resolved.

And yes, I think "all projects are either hard or very hard" is a corollary to Murphy's Law.