The Cabana Girl

I never wanted to learn the mechanics of the salt water automated pool. Bill went off to London without doing the weekly maintenance of the swimming pool. Told me to "superchlorinate" it on Sunday. That is accomplished through programming on the electronic box that sits in the living room of the house. A total mystery to me. I only know how to drive a few things with this control station. Certainly not all the settings functions that can be programmed.

But something about the water told me that it should be checked like Bill does weekly. Had my cabbie friend Karen come take me to run some errands. So here is the story:

I take some water to the pool store and they run it through their computer. I have no chlorine in the pool, the pH is off. I need acid and stabilizer and to "superchlorinate" the pool. Buy the acid and the stabilizer. Pour a gallon of acid in around the pool. Go to the filter basket and remove one live frog. Pour in the stabilizer. Come in and look at the magic control box and find "settings" poke a few buttons til I find "superchlorinate" hit that and "Good, I'm done." Hope that it runs on superchlorinate 24 hours -- the amount of time they told me to run it. It doesn't say how long it will run for.

Check the status window and it indicates the temperature of the pool, the air and then it says superchlorinate and the amount of time left is 23:45. Great. . I'm elated! I've figured out the system without reading anything. Go by the control box the next afternoon, 24 hours later and the red light is on that says "Check System" . Oh Wonderful! Now What????? Check the status and it says:"Salt System Low 2900PPM"

So I call Karen again. " Come on over, we have to go to the pool store and check the water again." At the pool store, I tell my friendly pool guy, "The system says I'm low on salt. I'm starting to get a feel for this pool stuff. Somehow I never thought of myself as Juan the pool boy" He says, "No, You are the Cabana Girl". Well, there are possibilities I guess. He then says "You're in perfect balance except for your salt" I say: "Not everyone can say that". So I head home with 40# of salt; put it in the edge of the pool and run the pool cleaner around for an hour. Now, it's perfect.

You know what I think? I think Bill loses the priviilege of taking care of the pool. He has been irresponsible and obviously doesn't know how to do it when he told me to "just superchlorinate it on Sundays" while he was gone. ha ha After all, the Cabana Girl should know.