Jennifer and Tresw, Thanks a lot for your advice. In fact, we swam today in the pool, yeaaaahhhH! Well, not really swimming, because the water was cold, about 60F and because I let the garden hose running in fresh water for an hour to lift up the level, but as a side effect it got even colder... But the clarity is now great. It is amazing comparing to a week ago, when was a swamp... What a miracle. I got the 4 way test kit, as suggested by TRESW and the readings were not that bad. Chlorine was really really low 0.4-0.6, but Ph was just right 7.6 and TA was 80 ppm (could have been 70 ppm, but with the background coloring I could not really say). The leaks are really big issue though. I broke the cement around the skimmer and now I can see the top plastic of the feeding tunnel (about 3-4 inches deep down), and it has about 0.5 inches water. What is even more worrisome is that the water is about 2" above the pool level, which means that the walls are all filled up with water all the way to the concrete deck and it is overflowing from any crack the water can get through. Also, the lines around the concrete deck are wet, as I dug about an inch deep around and now water started amassing around. And this is on the other side of the pool... I am having a serious leakage, that is for sure. I will rent these days a power hammer from Home depot and I intend to break to pieces the deck. The problem is I have not decided what to do with the debris yet. Any suggestions? As for the dead animal, I am no longer worried. I cleaned, and shocked, and cleaned, and shocked and now I believe there is nothing left from it... I hope. I certainly will avoid any contact of the water with my mouth for the next month or so, but overall I think I am over this now :) Thanks for all support and advice. If something else comes out, please shoot. I am ready to make some pics and post them online for discussion. Best, Lubo

The filter was likley tossed about in shipping. I always dis- and re- assemble a filter on a new installation. Embarassing moment: I assure the customer they have bought a great filter- one of the best on the market, and then DE or otherwise goes straight through it.

Thanks everyone for your responses/help. We don't have a pool builder because we were owner-builder up to shotcrete. After that, we used a licensed pool plaster company for the tile, coping, stone, plaster (i.e. all the finish work). The owner of the pool plaster company maintains that an epoxy plug is a good fix for the broken conduit. However, we've had 6 licensed pool contractors out to assess the damage and NONE of them said an epoxy plug is the proper way to fix the leak. ALL of them said that the shelf would need to be completely demo'd and the conduit (to all the lights) replaced. At this point the conduit to only 1 lighted bubbler is clear, at least enough to get the wire through. The other 2 pipes are still completely blocked (and 1 is broken). Another thing ALL the pool contractors told us is replastering just the shelf will not look good. They ALL said it will look like a big patch: The color won't match the rest of the pool and there will be a 12 foot wide, highly noticeable demarcation line where the 2 plasters meet and, since the water depth is only 9 inches deep, there's no way you won't see it. (FYI, we thought about adding a line of tile to try to cover up the demarcation line, but quickly realized that it would be an odd look for the design of our pool and just end up looking like we're covering something up. Plus the plaster color would still look different than the rest of the pool. Only one contractor considered doing that at first, but then thought about how it would look with our pool and said there's no way it would look right/not look out of place.) Since all the contractors said our pool is going to look pretty crappy with such a huge patch (and we want our pool to look right) we've decided to replaster the entire pool and are going to recover as much money as we can from the plaster company's surety bond. We're also going to try to find out if they have general liability insurance since they damaged pipes that were already existing when they began their work. 3 of the pool contractors we talked to told us a couple of interesting things that we were hoping to get clarification on: They said since the area of the shelf is more than 10% of our pool it's more likely that the plaster company's surety bond company would accept a full replaster of the pool as the proper fix rather than just patching/replastering the shelf. Has anyone heard of this? Btw, the pool contractor we've decided to go with put in their estimate (and is going to tell the bond company) that a full replaster is the only way to make the pool look right (i.e. not look like it's been patched). Our pool plaster was supposed to be Stonescapes Midnight Blue (it's written in our contract), but the pool contractors we spoke to said that unless the plaster company handed us a warranty certificate from NPT then we didn't get what we paid for: A true Stonescapes product backed by NPT's warranty. They said it's common for pool companies to say that they're going to install Stonescapes, charge the customer a higher $ amount, but then use a cheaper product (i.e. either not use Stonescapes at all, or buy the stones from NPT but mix it with a cheaper plaster not warranted by NPT). Does this sound right? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

I did the bucket test to account for evaporation and I get 1/16" - 1/8" lower water level in the pool per day vs the bucket. But there could be other issues such as the sun hits the bucket different than other areas of the pool. I just don't know if that amount of water difference between the bucket and pool is big enough to worry about. As for the air, I ran the garden hose and it looks like it is coming from the pump housing inlet pipe. The way it is piped it would be a pain to cut and redo. I was wondering if putting caulk on the pipe next to the housing would work or if there is another chemical one could use.