Water!

It's not even 8am and already I've had an exciting morning.  Want to hear about it? It's a doozie.

I staggered into my bathroom a few minutes before 7am with the intent of going back to sleep for another hour or so.  Apparently that wasn't meant to be.  I heard the distinct loud filter sound coming from the pool that we only hear when I forget to reattach the automatic pool vac. (Love that little thing, it cleans my pool for me every morning.)  That got my attention.  I know for a fact that I reconnected the hose yesterday afternoon after the neighbors went home and I got the kids inside.  So I'm looking into the pool from the bathroom window pondering why the vacuum isn't moving.  I can see the hose connected to it's personal jet.  Then, I notice the returns on the steps are bubbling.  Very odd, that only happens if those are the only returns on or if the pool water is below or almost below the skimmer level.  That's when I noticed copious amounts of water shooting from the filter and into my neighbor's backyard. 

Bryan was sound asleep, but he quickly dashed out of bed when I started yelling to him that our pool was draining.  All of that wonderfully warm 86 degree water was flooding our retainer wall, the side of our yard and the poor neighbor's yard.  All I could think about was their little teeny tiny Chihuahuas wading through mucky water logged grass later this morning.  Then I got to see Bryan battle the filter in his penguin boxers. (You need details, right? It was quite the site.)

So now you are probably wondering what happened to create all this wonderful Wednesday morning excitement, right? Well, last night we back washed the pool and we also needed to drain a few inches from the pool.  We got a lot of rain this past week and the water level was up and above the skimmer.  When that happens all the dead bugs just float on the pool.  I'm not a fan of that so I always insist that Bryan drain the water to a normal level.  Sadly, Bryan left the filter setting on waste last night and didn't put it back to whatever the normal filtering setting was.  I wasn't thinking about that last night as the bugs feasted on my legs, so I didn't think to remind him to make sure everything was as it should be.  

As a result of this snafu, I think we probably lost 6-8 inches of water.  It's going to take several hours to get the water level back to where it needs to be.  I feel really bad for the neighbors.  Not only did a good portion of their yard flood this morning, but their sprinkler system went on in the back yard a few minutes after we stopped our pool from hemorrhaging.