The swimming pool saga — Notting Hill Nomads

It turns out there’s a good reason why swimming pools are prepared to be ‘opened’ well before summer. When left for long periods during hot weather the algae goes gangbusters and turns the pool a glorious shade of green.

This encourages the growth of shady bacteria (that can lead to pretty severe infections if it gets in through broken skin) and drowned animals become thoroughly decayed…nice. We’d successfully maintained pools before but what greeted us on this occasion was next level.

Removing the cover was an art unto itself, as all the water on top had to flow back into the pool through little holes at the centre (minus the ‘bits’) as we rolled it back on itself. Then cleaning both sides took Fee an age, as she drew the short straw on this one.

Once the cover was off we were able to call in the local pool guy to start the cleaning process, although with paying guests due at the manor in ten days it was going to be a huge challenge for him to get the pool from slime to sublime in such a short period.

The first step was to give the pool ‘shock’ treatment by adding chlorine to kill the algae, bacteria and harmful pathogens. Then a clarifier and flocculent treatment is added which makes all the particles and debris clump together and settle on the bottom, ready to be vacuumed up. Once the pool is sparkling clear it’s ready for use. That was the plan anyway…

It was when the filtration unit was turned on that things started to get hairy. The cleaning process relies heavily on a fully functioning circulation system to get the chlorine and flocculent mixed thoroughly in the water, and to allow the water to be cleaned through the filter. This was severely hampered as only one of the two pipes bringing water from the pool to the filtration system was functioning. Repairing the broken pipe would require digging up the concrete surrounding the pool to identify the fault and there was obviously no time for that.

To add to the drama the sand filter sprang a leak. This big blue vessel is under severe pressure as the water is pushed through the sand inside to clean it, so a leak meant it couldn’t function at full capacity. The pool guy also warned us that the pressure on the weakened area along the seam could cause it to explode at any minute - and if for any reason we weren’t able to turn it off (if it happened during the night), the pump would continue to run and empty all the pool water into the garden. Great.

So although things weren’t looking good, for the next few days we just kept listening out for a bang and otherwise stuck to the plan.

Unfortunately with the odds stacked against us the plan started to falter. Sometimes when the cleaning process isn’t given sufficient time at each stage the chemicals added can begin to cancel each other out and diminish their effectiveness. That combined with a filtration system not running at full capacity meant that instead of staying on the bottom, ‘bits’ started floating to the top. Our new job was to scoop them out as quickly as we could to avoid them getting sucked into the filter, which was already under strain.

The realisation that the ‘bits’ we were once the parts of animals, and the associated goop was wiggling with tiny critters who were still very much alive was pretty revolting. Sticking hands down inside the filter to clear the basket made you wonder what else was in there. The discovery of a snake skin in the pool plant room roof certainly didn’t help!

However we soldiered on scooping around the clock. Given the situation, the pool guy had handed us the responsibility of the backwash procedure (a method used to clean the could-blow-at-any-moment sand filter) multiple times during the day and night.

Eventually things began to improve and although the pool wasn’t ready for us to swim in before we left, it was certainly in a much better state than when we arrived. We hope the guests enjoyed it!