Zen and the art of my Canadian Tire Swimming Pool
bcmeikle@shaw.ca
This is my canadian tire pool. It cost me 2000 bucks. Thats about 1500
canadian . we used it without problem for 2 or 3 years. It's not heated
and is sometimes downright cold. I kind of like that on a hot day.
Over winter the first couple years, I drained it down, put away the pumps
and filters, and watched it fill with rain water. Then I got the bright idea
of not tarping it off, which was dumb, I just thought that since it filled
with water anyways on top of the tarp why bother? Next summer the pool had
a slow leak. What I learned was that the liner, like all plastics, is better
kept out of the sun.
We made it through last summer with a leak. It cost a fortune in chlorine
and was hard to keep in balance though so this spring I needed to deal with
it. I tried to find the leak and finally gave up. The liner is only $170 why
not get a new one?
That's when hell began. The new liner seemed too small. I could put it in
(tight) but as soon as I added any water it would just pull of the sides.
On talking to Canadian Tire, I finally found a manager who told me they had
stopped selling pools by the company that made mine:
7-11 pools
in Ontario. Thus, the new liner was for a different pool. This is the first
Point Of Incompetence in my tale. The person who sold me the wrong liner.
But why would a worker at Canadian Tire actually know about what they're
selling?
I searched around and found my docs for the original pool. It had a 1-800
number and I called 7-11. The nice lady there, Kristina, told me that the
new liner was for a 24 foot in diameter pool. Mine is 24 foot 6 inches or
something. She said that the new liner was 1 foot in perimeter different than
my pool.
So I got her to ship me out a new liner that was the right size. I should
have known I was in trouble when she said it would arrive in 3 days. 2 weeks
later I get a call asking me if I was the guy who ordered a liner? The strongly
ESL woman said she'd ship it right away, that there had been a problem with
the address. I tried to get her to email me the Courier code so I could track
the package but the @'s and the dots in an email address just
were impossible for her to figure out how to write out...
In a couple weeks I had my new liner again. With shipping this one came to
$270. To my amazement when I went to install it seemed too small!
The invoice I got shows that this is a liner for a 24 foot pool. I think
they shipped the wrong one.
They won't return my calls. I talked to Kristina once and she told me she
had picked the right liner herself from the warehouse.
I orderer 3 cubic yards of sand and spent a day shovelling it in under the
liner to raise it up so it might fit. I hired my friend alex to help me install
it. Perhaps I hadn't been rigorous enough in getting the creases out. He
spent a lot of effort. There are no creases.
It didn't work.
I've been working on this problem
for 2 months now, and I still have not had a swim. Luckily my kids have played
in it each time i've had a foot or so of water in there (until the liner
pulls off) and with only a foot it gets warm!