This story was written after our true life experience, the theme being "follow directions, if you can understand them!" ~Smile~
The advice others are giving you is very true, sand around the cirumfrance of the outer ring, not a 'bed' of sand under the whole pool...enjoy!
'Inground Pool, or The Pool in the box.'
" Last summer my husband, Greg, "took a dive."
After much pressuring and a serious propaganda campaign, ( we had plastered the refridgerator with pictures cut from department store flyers of happy 'pool people' kneeling in their pools to demonstrate the supposed depth of the refreshing water of their private pool; happy children, moms and dads looking wonderfully trim and fit in their designer swimsuits, volleying beach balls in the vast expanse of their own private backyard liquid sports arena. He got the full effect of this collage whenever he went for a cold drink.) Even the living room wasn't a safe retreat when the pool promoters were on the job:"Look at those people on the TV commercial, Dad, saving money by not paying the ticket prices of amusement parks and the city pool, let alone the gas money spent to get there, but instead enjoying their leasure time in the privacy of their own backyard family pool!"
He gave in to the family's pressures and pleadings and a bought one of those "economical" above ground plastic swimming pools for the kids to cool off in. ( Of course, Mom wasn't disinterested.) The package it came in was impossibly small and narrow- giving rise to the obvious question..."Uh, Dad? How can a SWIMMING POOL come in a box?"As if to allay our fears, the enclosed instructions assured us that "Many hours of happy family fun were contained herein.~Some assembly required."
We optimistically calculated it would take an afternoon to pop the thing together and we'd be swimming in the "family fun" by early evening, well, wouldn't you? After four and a half hours in the sweating heat of the afternoon sun, trying to make sense of English instructions badly translated from Japanese, Dad was having a hard time envisoning the family or the fun. "Some assembly required"? Yeah, right.
After all was said (some not fit to mention!) and done, the brand new blue pool stood proudly on its bed of clean, sifted sand and its fresh, expensive, bone chilling 40,000 gallons of water glinted invitingly in the moonlight.
Too tired to do anything but wipe sweat from his eyes and nod numbly as the kids all "oooed and ahhed", Dad went off to bed to cries of "But why CAN'T we get in tonight? But you SAID it would be done this afternoon !!"
At the break of dawn the next morning the potential swimmers had assembled, wiping sleep from their eager eyes. Inflatable toys and neon- hued styrofoam noodles in hand, they assured Mom that the dew on the ground wasn't really that cold and the steam rising from the pool's surface meant that atleast the water was warmer than the air temperature, so they really should get in.
The phone rang at work exactly six and half minutes later. Dad, just arriving, got the worried voice of Mom on the line, "Honey, the kids jumped in the pool first thing this morning, and started playing that game where they run in a circle and make the water follow them in a wave, you know what I mean? But I made them get right out again and brought them in the house, because the water's doing something strange...its swirling like a whirlpool and it seems to be building momentum!"
Dad, puzzled by this development, not recalling any caution in the pool's English/Japanese instructions about whirlpool warnings- asked "Hmm, well, what's it doing now?" Though he wasn't prepared for the answer.
The children, shivering as if they'd been rescued from sea monster, stood safely wrapped in towels and huddled in the hallway behind her, their eyes wide. Mom stood tiptoe on the side of the tub in the back bathroom, peering out the window into the yard, her voice trembling a little as she said "Whoa..., honey, the water is still swirling in a circle, like when you flush the toilet, one side of the pool is raising up higher into the air and the other is dipping lower to the ground with every revolution. It seems like the weight of the water's circular motion is pushing against the lower wall... Oh, no, the whole thing is getting ready to..." her voice faded to nothingness with an indrawn breath.
"Yes, yes? he asked desperately. "The tide just went out" she replied , in an awestruck whisper, as the 40,000 gallons of water and all Dad's hard work washed out of the yard, lifting and carrying the dog's house with the yipping family pet tethered to it, stopping at the barrier of the cow's fence, rolling through into the field toward the cows, who, startled from their nonchalant grazing by the approaching wall of water, fled in a small stampede.
For future reference, to save anyone else from ever having to go through this tidal wave nightmare, NEVER place an above ground pool on a "soft layer of clean sand." Even with the best intentions, (ours being not tearing the liner with sharp rocks that might work themselves up through the soil and to make a soft bottom for the children's feet)- Just don't do it. The instructions will warn you not to, (if you are bilingual!) In a mixture of languages, they specifically say to "put sand all around the inner circle of the plastic walls in the shape of a V, but under no circumstances under the pool."
We learned our lesson. We salvaged the outer rim by glueing a crack it suffered in the eruption with a sealant called "Goop." The liner wasn't torn, so Dad made a trip to the Rent-All Store and came home with a TeraMite machine. He dug a hole and set the pool walls down two feet into it, before refilling it's massive empty maw with the liquid gold. (The water company loved us that month!) Adding a security fence with a gate and a lock, he dusted his hands on his jeans and was heard to have murmered under his breath
"It's not going anywhere now!"
You can see from the photos, our story did have a happy ending. Summer time became splash-time once again at our house, and we did in fact achieve the promised "many hours of happy family fun".
The kids even went back to school at the end of the summer and told their friends that we have an
in ground pool.
What? ...It's true.
