Wire Tie Willy, as he is now called, was up to his old tricks with wire ties. You know how Red Green is famous for his duct tape? Well, Bill is getting famous around here for his multiple uses of wire ties--those plastic tie thingies that you slip through the end on them and they lock up tight. He put together his version of a solar heating panel for the pool. PCV pipes laid out on a few steel bars and secured with wire ties. Actually, it was after he wire tied the blue tub back together that he dubbed himself Wire Tie Willy.

Oh, the things we do around here. That blue eyesore of a tub is still hanging around. It passed for a "warm tub" in the pool last year. Bill circulated water from garden hoses he had put up on the roof. It made the temperature in the "warm tub" a few degrees warmer than the bigger pool. We were able to keep the pool up until late September because of that.

After swimming season was over last year, he got the bright idea of trying to make a "warm tub" in the basement for the winter. Only trouble was, it was too big to trundle downstairs. So, Wire Tie Willy got out his trusty saw, cut the thing in half, and then transported the two halves down the steps with ease. Well, with fairly ease because the danged thing was so big and bulky. When he got it down in the tool room which was the only place that didn't have a rug on the floor, he wire tied the thing back together. He made rows of holes so the wire ties could be threaded through the hard plastic. And, voila, the tub was back together again. He used the pool cover to make a liner and filled the new "warm tub" up with about five or six tankfuls of hot water from the hot water tank. We worried about the expense of that while we luxuriated in our new spa.

But we didn't keep up with that luxury because the air temperature in the basement got too cold to cope with after we got out of the water. And it was a lot of work emptying the tub and filling it back up again, not to mention the guilt we felt about the waste of water, plus I wasn't cottoning to having to go downstairs every day to be able to enjoy the tub. Not with my arthritic knees. So, we had one final "aaaah" moment in it and he emptied it and took it apart. That's why he had to wire tie it together (again) for us to use it in the pool this year. But, you know what, we're thinking that we won't have to use it for a "warm tub" again this year because the black PCV pipes are putting out a lot more heated water than the green garden hoses did last year.

Another problem that came up this year was that the pool pump died. We bought this pump new last year after the original died on us. Now, Bill's bought a super duper powerful one, that also has a filter basket that you just scoop stuff out of instead of having to scurry around the stores in July trying to find a filter to buy. Why do they do that? When summer is in full swing, all they have is fall stuff.