Math/New Water Help

[elsie]

Hi Janet!

Thanks for the welcome! I just put together a slideshow of my place to share with you, friends back in my home state of Minnesota and anyone else on the forum who cares to view my pool and property. By the way, I live in Maylene, Alabama, about 35 miles south of Birmingham. As a bit of background (I know this is long, but one can choose how much to read or not read), I bought this property 7 years ago for $102k (and with the falling housing market probably isn't worth much more than that now despite improvements). I've done a lot to it: had metal roofs installed on house and outbuildings; had it sided and new windows and patio door installed; stained the pool concrete deck and patio with H&C stain (great economy-a few hundred bucks and it transformed that old gray porous concrete beautifully); put a colored stain on the back and front decks and built a third, smaller deck "back in the little woods;" had trees removed that were hanging over the roof (but I still have to go up there routinely as well as on the metal roofs of the pool house and shed to blow crud off); and did a fair amount to the inside of the house as well. I also had the diving board and ladders removed to make a "flat" pool since it's pretty much just me using the pool. It's an older pool and there's nothing fancy-schmancy about it, but it is pretty.

There's both an upper driveway with attached garage as well as a lower driveway with a huge carport (which I never use but still maintain by blowing off perpetual "gifts" from the trees). As I so often tell friends back home, this property OWNS me -- it's continual work year-round, from restaining the decks every Spring and trimming hundreds of bushes to hauling and putting down new cypress or cedar mulch to leaf work that goes on, and on and on, pressure washing the pool deck and of course the regular maintenance which is always ongoing. I think you live in LA, don't you? Spring here with all the trees is a horrific mess; I blow those things that come from all the budding trees daily during April and May, sometimes hourly when I just can't stand seeing them all over the place. They get so deep you could shovel them almost, and this goes on week after week after week. The price one pays when surrounded by trees...

Luckily for me, a microburst type of storm rolled through last August and destroyed the pump and tore the ancient, leaking liner and there was no out-of-pocket for replacements except for a new multiport I had installed to replace the old one which wasn't damaged but had been giving me some trouble. The liner guy also put in a brand new floor beneath the new liner and, at my request, got rid of that main drain which wasn't operative anyway (but which still made me nervous). He replaced the StaRight 1.5 hp pump with a Hayward 1 hp Superpump (or maybe it was from 2 hp to 1.5 hp, I don't recall for sure). That concerned me but he said it would do just as good a job (maybe I'll save a bit on electricity).

The darker liner is a deeper blue when the sunlight's off it, but it still has a nice aqua sheen in bright sunlight; I was unable to commit to an even darker liner as I really did enjoy the lighter aqua, so picked something in the middle. The only thing I don't like is that close up you can see all the seams (in the deep end they're like darts on a blouse), but you really have to be right on top of the pool to see them. Unavoidable, I'm told (my old liner had no pattern left so the seams were rather invisible). And on the aerial shots (I took from the roof), it almost appears as if the deep end is a little bleached, but it's not of course, it's just the way the light affects it.

Fortunately, I'm an unusually active and fit 54 year old (two of my dogs are seniors now and go on shorter daily walks, but I take Betty, the larger rescue girl I adopted a year ago, hiking in the hills behind my house virtually every day), and though sometimes I dream of a garden home with a postage-sized yard, I know I'd be bored within the first day! So as long as I can keep the property up I'll stay. I mean, where else could I have such a beautiful place for my money?

The URL below *should* work as I just tried it by copying it into my browser, but if it doesn't we can PM and share e-mail addys and I can forward the Kodak photoshare e-mail (just let me know). This is the first time I've used Kodak photoshare in a couple of years and they've made some interesting changes - you can control the speed of the slide show and background color (the default of black is best), then just hit the play button. It starts off with a few Spring photos with the pool cover still on. Unfortunately the pics aren't full screen anymore and there's a bit of distortion in them but heck, it's free!

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLan..._photos_button

[Watermom]

Very nice, Elsie!