Green is the Color of My Pool

I decided this year to take a couple of trips down to Florida to keep the lawn in check, adjust the water in the pool and fertilize the orchard. This is the first of the trips – I fly Southwest and booked a nonstop flight out of Providence – only problem is it leaves at 6 AM – yawn.

So I get into Tampa at 9:15 and to get to Wimauma (about 40 miles away) I plan to use the HART Bus System. A guy at the Masonic Campground had offered to pick me up but seeing I was by myself and had plenty of time, I wanted to try the bus system. I found the HART bus stop right at the main terminal. I had looked up on line what the bus connections should be and it was a Route 30 bus to get me from the airport to the MTC center, there I get a route 8 bus that takes me to Brandon Mall and from there I use a route 53 bus to the Wimauma Walmart – Nothing to it. These buses seem to run pretty close to their schedule but they sure go some winding routes through the back streets of Tampa and Ybor City – I don’t think I want to do this trip at night. The route 8 bus trip had 60 – yes 60 - stops. I guess at rush hour they might use them all but at 10 AM we only stopped at every third or so. So that is the bad part but the good part is it only cost $1.80 for my all day seniors HART pass. Great deal.  Maybe when we are down here full time next winter we’ll use it to tour Tampa area and Ybor City (old Cuban cigar making town).

So I make it to Wimauma Walmart by 12 noon and John from the campground comes and picks me up and drives me out to my house. John and his wife have been using the swimming pool and he tells everything was fine until last week when the pool turned green. 

The next door neighbor, Rusty, came over and said it needed more salt (3 bags he suggested) because the chlorine generator only read 1200 ppm where it should be up near 3300 ppm. It sounded logical so I went to Walmart and bought 5 bags just to be on the safe side – after dumping in 4 bags and seeing that the chlorine generator still read the salt at 1200 ppm – I guessed that this wasn’t working. A quick internet search told me that I should unhook the chlorine generator and look inside it to see if the electrical plates were clean or if they had any deposits on them.

I did and they were so heavily coated that you couldn’t see the plates nor any gap between them. I got out the high pressure sprayer and so thin tools to scrap and blast the deposits – it got the bulk off but I finally had to use a muriatic acid bath to completely finish the job. Put it all back together again, turned it on and went to bed – it was a long day. Next morning the salt read 4700 ppm – way higher than it was supposed to be but it wouldn’t hurt anything (according to the pool supply store). 

Now after two days of scrubbing and cleaning all traces of the green are gone – splash – I’m swimming everyday with the temperatures in the high 80’s and humidity up around 90 % - I needed the pool.

I wonder if he has a bathing suit on.