As far as I can tell the steps to this process go as follows: Drain the water down to below the jets & intake outlets while cleaning out any leaves and debris. Suction all of the water out of the pipes. Cap the pipes from the pool end. Add three different types of things to the water in an attempt to limit algae, metal corrosion, and one powdered oxidizer. Manoeuvre the pool cover into place and then affix it in place with a rubber weather strip gasket type thin while on your hands & knees bent over the entire time. Takes a couple of hours. Isn’t all together unpleasant but I’m glad we only do it once per year, and then in the reverse order to open it up, but that requires heating the water too so it takes an awful lot longer. Same with filling the pool water level back up, with a garden hose you’re looking at eight or more hours.
Well, it’s now Thursday before the Thanksgiving long weekend and the forecast looks to be halfway decent at least. I think I will try my hand at some joinery today to keep the furniture build progressing at an even pace. I spent a number of hours yesterday hand planing those six boards, and I’m not entirely certain that they are any better than they were to begin with. Ha! I have many hours of sanding in my future that’s for certain.
I haven’t seen enough consecutive early morning frost to venture behind the barn to the last wood pile to start up splitting again. I want to be almost certain that those ground wasps are done for the season before I set up shop anywhere within 300 m of them. All that sweating, banging & clanging with likely raise their ire, and I can do without another swarming attack this calendar year. Never again would be preferable, but I’m not that lucky. Before this I hadn’t had a swarmed attack since 2008 when I built our shed. I was pulling up old posts that were set into the ground as a make shift retaining wall and got jumped by a bunch of yellow jackets or hornets or something. It was very unpleasant. I do not recommend it.
It was unseasonably warm last night so the damn mosquitoes were out in full force too. Seems odd that they never really died down this year. They’ve been a menace since early May. Did the bird flu kill off more birds than we are aware of and that’s why the mosquito population is so high, or was it because we kept having major cloud burst rain fall that likely kept puddles full out in the trees all summer long? When we had the months long drought last summer the mosquitoes practically died off completely due to there being no moisture on the ground anywhere at all. The lake dropped 3 nearly 4 feet by October last year. It was way way up this spring though. Nearly over the shore line at the boat launch. It was crazy high just months after dropping so low some folks had to anchor their boats 50/60 feet out from shore to have water deep enough for their boats draw. Crazy times are afoot.
