We opened the pool early this year (thanks in part to needing a new pool heater after our previous heater had a meltdown at the end of last year), and had the cousins over for a swim in May!

As I'm a bit late in posting this image, I can give you all a glimpse of the "future": The pool was quite expensive to run this year. First, we had to buy a new pool heater (the old one lasted about 10 years, which I guess is fairly average for Hayward pool heaters). Then, the pool-cleaning robot stopped working and had to be repaired after only two years. Again, research indicates that Hayward pool cleaners are not very reliable, so I guess this is par for the course. Then, I have suspected that the pool has been leaking water for a couple of years now, and this was the year I finally decided to have Canada Leak Detection come and check it out.

Canada Leak Detection does an amazingly thorough job, and they found three spots where things were leaking. Unfortunately, one of the spots was the main drain line, which is not possible to repair without removing the entire pool. They just sealed it off, so now the main drain no longer works. Not a big deal, I guess. To be honest, I never really used the main drain except during the winterization process, and there are other ways to drain the pool. The other leaks were below the flagstone pool deck, so they had to come out, pull up part of the deck, fix the leak, and then put the flagstone back. They seemed to do a really good job, and you can't even tell that they were here.

There are still a few more repairs that need to be done, but those can wait until next year.

Technical Details: This photo was taken with my Pixel 4.