The winter is over (I think!), spring had arrived and now summer is in our midst (although I have been told not to rely on the fact that we are in ‘summer’ as Toronto weather can sometimes be unpredictable).

As some of you may have read from my posts last summer, my brother-in-law has an outdoor swimming pool.  With children it is a blessing, especially when the weather is dry and warm.  However, when spring arrives, preparation to clean and get the pool ready after the winter has passed must get underway.

The first thing is to carefully remove the cover, ensuring as much as possible not to drop the cover from any end otherwise you will end up with lots of leaves and winter dirt in the water which is exactly what you are trying to avoid in this process.

Step one successfully done (it took five of us), we managed to remove a lot of leaves around the area before removing the cover, then we were greeted by…like a swamp from hell!

As you can see, you don’t swim in water like this, when we looked closer, there were all sorts of living things floating and swimming around.  Time to start the filter and start the cleaning process.

Within a couple of days, there is a slow but sure change in the cleaning process.  Still far from swimmable, but going in the right direction.  The water has to be basically shocked with chlorine  to really get the water moving and filtering.

At this stage the floor can still not be seen and the water is still very dirty.

After a few days (and a few extra as the filter needed sorting) the delight of the kids could not be held in, when they heard then saw that the pool was ready, they jumped in…literally, with their clothes on, the delight of summer is upon us.