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| Repairs, Maintenance, Pest and Disease Control |
Big Cracks
If you have a large crack in the shell of your pool, you are in for
trouble. Big cracks, which seldom occur in pools made of reinforced
concrete, are caused by uneven settling of the pool shell or by ice pressure in winter. If cracks would get no larger, they would be repairable.
But they do get larger. Once a major crack occurs, it usually continues
to widen a bit with each passing season, making any patch in it
worthless.
But you can try. Some do manage successfully to apply patches to
such cracks, and you may be one of the lucky ones. Drain the pool,
clean it out, and then chisel out the inside surfaces of the big crack to
give your patching material something to hold on to. Prepare a half-and-
half mixture of sand and cement, making it just wet enough to be
plastic and easily applied. Give the patch plenty of time to set before
curing it, preparatory to refilling the pool.
Pool Maintenance
Unless you are an old hand at water gardening, the horrible looking
layer of scum which undoubtedly will form on top of your pool shortly
after you fill and plant it for the first time will break your heart. Have
courage, for this is the most natural situation in the world.
Scum
A goodly part of the scum is dust and bits of organic material which
have escaped from your planting boxes. Once the earth and fertilizer
in the boxes become thoroughly saturated, they will not release further
clutter.
Scum consists also of countless millions of tiny suspended vegetable
organisms, thriving on the manure, in solution, which has been let loose
in the water. These organisms, to a large extent, are various forms of
algae. They will be ever-present-and welcome-in your pool. Part of the
scum quite possibly may be fish food. If you are a new water gardener,
you probably will feed your fish too much, and excess food will remain in the pool to decompose.
Surprisingly enough, one of the principal factors contributing to the
scum will be plenty of sunlight. The foliage of water-lilies and of floating and submerged plants in a newly planted pool takes a few days to
spread. As it spreads, it kills out the microscopic plant life in two ways:
First, it competes for food in suspension in the pool water; second, it
produces more and more shade as it spreads, and in shade the microscopic plants cannot multiply or even hold their own.
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