Commence to drain.

I've decided to drain the pool of shame and try to start over with the water. After 5 shock treatments and 1 mineral removal treatment we still have orange/yellow water. Not brown any longer, but still nothing I want to swim in. Supposedly - according to the bottles of crap we've been putting into the water - if you add the mineral removal stuff before the shock treatment you won't have the discoloration. We'll see.

Now we run into the "what do you do with 4,000 gallons of water" issue. If you just let loose the filter and drain holes, all 4K drains into the neighbor's yard. Not acceptable.

So I once again McGuyver'd a solution. I looked around in the garage for something to direct the water and found 3 pieces of gutter up in the rafters. Not quite long enough. I also locate the hose and extensions from the shop vac. Oh, yeay, there is Craig's didgeridoo, that's about the right diameter. Yes, I said didgeridoo. (In reality it is a piece of pvc pipe with one end melted and twisted. He made it at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts open house this spring.)

So. I taped the end of the didgeridoo to one of the filter hoses (the filter holes are about 4x the diameter of the actual pool drain, thus releasing more water and emptying the pool of shame faster), the didgeridoo to the shop vac hose, set the shop vac hose on the gutter (slightly elevated to promote the downward flow) and let loose the water.

The water now flows down our driveway and onto the road. I am still going to wait until dark to open the flow and empty the whole pool. I don't want the neighbors wondering where all that chlorine smelling water is coming from...