Swimming pools blog

Help!
This spring we moved into a house with a pool. The pool is about 17
years old, vinyl liner inground, 20X40 lap pool, 4 feet deep.
The person who lived in the house before us maintained the pool
himself.
We were in the house about 3 weeks when the pool turned green. We
didn’t know anything about maintaining a pool so I told my wife to
find a pool service. Not an easy thing to do in our little town. We
finally found a guy, but we’ve not been happy with him. He shows up
when he feels like it and we have a hard time dealing with him on a
personal level — he’s a middleaged guy with a terrible attitude,
surly and never does what he says he’ll do. For example, he said he’d
set up the Kreepy Krawly the former owner left behind, said he’d
bring algaecide, said our skimmer basket was broken and that he’d
replace it. Never did any of this stuff.

Anyway, to keep this story short this summer has been a nightmare
with the pool. It’s never clear — always murky, we’ve been waiting
for the pool guy to show up since Thursday (it’s Sunday afternoon)
and we have yellow stuff growing on the bottom in addition to what
looks like bug parts collecting in big clumps (on a regular basis).
My wife is tired of dealing with it, she wants to empty it, clean it,
and cover it. I say we can’t. We have problems with the pool liner
and the water table in this area (big bubbles of water trapped in the
pool liner in the side when it rains). I’m going to start looking for
a new service, but the few good ones around here are so busy that
they’re already putting people on a waiting list for NEXT summer.
We’re just trying to get through the rest of this summer. My wife has
taken over some of the cleaning, but she’s a little person and has a
hard time doing the heavy work, anyway, she’s already got more than
enough to do. As for myself, I’m presently in a wheelchair due to an
old injury.
I would appreciate any advice regarding how we can make having a pool
into a more pleasant experience.
Mike