Warmer Weather in the South

I have been living in the South off and on for the past 15 years, I can say if you live in the South a must have during the summer months is a swimming pool, especially if you have a child. When we first moved into our home we had a nice 4ftx24ft pool in the back yard, the home though wasn’t “ours” and when the ground started to get messed up, instead of fixing the land, my wonderful monster in law, decided the pool needed trashed.

Fixing the land would have been simple and we would have needed to replace the liner, however, it was do able. When the home was signed over to my husband and I, the pool was long gone, so we got a small intex pool, it was about 30inches deep and 12foot around. It was small but good enough to get in and cool off on, this lasted about 3 years.

Last year the poles started breaking so we decided the pool seen its last days.

Since we have a teenager that is all we heard “when are we getting a new pool”. We wanted to get something bigger than the previous pool, so I hit up Walmart.com and WOW, the pools are pretty expensive. I started looking at the deal stores around us, found a few at dirt cheap 16ftx48inches only $125! However, at the time we didn’t have the money, and when you purchase anything from dirt cheap all sales are final. Oftentimes, you purchase items that are broken or missing parts, so we weren’t wanting to spend over $100 on a pool not knowing if it was all there. Sure it was a good deal, but not if we had to purchase a bunch of parts to make it complete.

We decided to check another store we love, Bargain Hunt. Bargain Hunt, is similar to Dirt Cheap, however, at Bargain Hunt they have a 30 day return policy. We found a few pools there, two were $411 and a few $97 ones, we didn’t want to spend $400 on a pool and the cheaper pools were the blow up ring one, I wanted a metal frame one.

A few days later we checked back and we found a 20ftx48inches pool for $299, which would have been what we would have paid at Walmart for a smaller pool, so we decided to jump on it.

Let me first start by saying this pool was HEAVY and we had a hell of a time getting it in the back seat of our grand prix, but we got it and when we got home we let our daughter know the place sold the pool… being the teenager she is, we heard… “I told you they would sell it, your plans always backfire on you” and she was a bit unhappy, because it is April and what is she going to do without a pool… So being the good mom I am, I said yea they sold it to US.

Now the trick to get the land level. Our backyard is something else… We borrowed a tiller, bought some rakes got our daughter and niece and we began.

We already had a small section a tad level, however, we had a hill to break down, this was not a fun task. We got the section as level as possible with what we had, so then we started to put the pool up.

I wasn’t expecting the pool to take up the whole area that we had tilled and raked.

Now the pool is filling, however, the hose wasn’t long enough so we did what any other person with a plan would do, and we ran the hose through the front door and out the back!

It took us almost 8 hours before we were ready to fill the pool, however, once the pool started to get filled the kids were excited. They didn’t care the sun wasn’t out, they didn’t care that the water was freezing cold, after about 5 hours of filling the kids realized the hose has a small kink in it and it wasn’t filling properly.

However the next day it was full enough for them to jump in!

Do you see what I see from the above picture? Yes, the pool is uneven! Why? Well, because the pool somehow didn’t get in the complete circle we prepared. So while one side is even the other side is on a small incline and one part is on a small decline, this making the pool be about 7inches off…

We debated on draining the pool, however, this pool is using over 8,000 gallons of water. That would be a lot of water wasted… We decided to let it finish filling to see if it would make it to the pump. If it didn’t make it to the pump, we would have had no choice but to drain and refill.

Thankfully, it made it to the pump. While I am disappointed the pool is a little off, it will be coming down at the end of the season, so next year we can do it right!

Here we are middle of April, gloomy days and the kids are swimming!

We have a few modifications to do so that we can hook up the sand pump, if you have ever had a pool like this you know those paper filters are a waste of money, best to hook a sand filter to it and never have to worry about those paper filters again!

Of course, I will not be getting in the pool until it heats up some, probably middle of May, but I will be spending a lot of time in the pool with my family this summer. I will do my best to keep articles on the site, even if they’re guest articles.

With having a rough past three years, family time is needed bad in my home so we will be doing just that spending a lot of family time together, I will do my best to bring you some great giveaways still.

Over all I think we got a great deal on the pool, especially since the PRO Series 18 ft. Round 48 in. Deep Metal Frame Swimming Pool is almost $700 on Amazon!

Do you have a swimming pool? When do you usually open it for the Summer, here the kids think the first 80 degree day means the pool needs to be put up!