Taking down a portable pool.

Earlier this summer, my daughter bought a portable soft sided pool.  It was 15 ft. across and 3 1/2 ft. deep.  Not a big one, but enough to get cooled off and float on the lounges.

It was fun figuring out how to get it laid out and then of course, it took a while to fill it.  We put the ladder together, hooked up the filter system and by the 4th of July it was in full operation and we were enjoying it.

But along, comes fall with its cool nights and not as warm days so it was time to take it down.  Now, how hard can it be to take down a pool.  I mean, you drain the water, dry it and fold it up.  Right?   Wrong!

It took almost as long to drain it as it did to fill it.  We opened the drain yesterday morning and it drained all day and night so by this morning, there was only a little bit on the bottom which was below the drain hole which was on the side.

She got in it and using her sponge mop, push the remaining water towards the drain while I tried lifting to get it to go towards the drain.  It was hard work for her pushing all the water and my back was killing me from all the stooping to push down so the water would drain or the lifting to try to get it to go out.

I got the bright idea that we should grab the top of it and pull it over on itself until we had it upside down.  Good idea and it was working until we had about half the pool waist high and a gust of wind caused it to bellow out and I thought we were going para sailing for a moment.

It startled both of us and then all we could do was laugh.  She thought it was really funny when I said, "I thought you were going to have to help me get down out of the tree."

But we tried again, fighting the wind which kept trying to catch it and send us all flying.  But our mission was accomplished as we got it turned upside down and got all the water out.  Then we flipped it back so she could wash it all down with bleach water.

Round and round we went with me lifting the sides so she could wipe them down and when we finished, we were going to rinse it but then would have the water drainage problem so decided we would just flip it again.

This time, we remembered and tried to keep it low enough so the wind couldn't grab it and pull it and us along with it.

We flipped it back and straightened it out as much as we could and left it to dry in the sunshine and with the wind we had today, that helped too.

This evening we were going to fold it up and move it into the covered porch as we are to have rains come in this week and didn't want it filled with water again.  But it was kind of heavy and bunglesome so we folded it as much as we could and left it sitting in the middle of the undercloth that went under the pool.  So now we will wait for another nice warm sunny day when it can dry off and then we can refold it and move it inside for the winter.

Of course, whenever you do something silly or stupid like we did with the wind catching it and trying to make us airborne, we hoped no one had seen us.  But our dear friends and neighbors were enjoying their morning coffee on their front porch and had seen it all.

Later, I went over to talk to them and he told me, "I thought for a minute that I was going to have to rescue you and Melanie from the tree.  I thought you were going to go kite flying."   HA! HA!  Although he was right and we even laughed at ourselves.

So now we know how to set the pool up and we learned how to take it down.  Maybe next year, we will be able to do it a little more efficiently and won't be sailing off into the tree tops.

This is how it looked when we got it filled and ready for use.  I didn't take a picture of it as we emptied it.  But I think we will remember and the first thing we'll do is not pick a windy day to empty the pool.