When & How to Drain a Swimming Pool
There are several reasons why you might want to drain your wonderful home swimming pool. The chemical balance may not be correct, or you may need to do some repairs. You may just feel that it is time to change the water, which should be at least every couple of years. Perhaps your partner is insisting that it is done, but you don’t want to admit that you have no idea how to do it. For any reason, you may well ask yourself what kind of equipment are you going to need for this task and how much will it cost you.
Why do I need to drain my pool?
You may need to consider draining your pool for a variety of reasons, these include:
- Dry climate where you can’t keep topping up the pool when it’s not in use.
- Routine heavy pool cleaning (every 5-7 years)
- Calcium build-up and staining
- Pool repair or painting
- Unsafe stabilizer readings
What do you need to drain your pool?
Get most of the water out…
An Electric Submersible Pump is a readily available hire item. You lower the pump in the deep end of the pool and ensure that the discharge hose is long enough to reach the intended disposal area for the water. After several hours you will be left with a small amount of water in the pool that the pump can’t suck up. If you are just draining your pool to refill it for chemical or health reasons, this small amount of leftover water will not affect your refresh.
Suck up the puddle…
A Puddle Sucker Pump is suitable only for water without sediment or suspended solids, that is, clean water. It is capable of sucking water off a flat surface when there is as little as 1mm -3mm of water depth. These need to be primed before use but then work automatically once pumping is under way. This will leave your pool all but empty of water.
Clean the sludge & the water…
Can’t see the bottom of your pool and really have no idea what is in there? Is your pool water thick like pea soup and sludgy? The pump that you’re looking for is a sludge pump unit. This pump set up can handle solids up to 26mm in diameter and pump out water which consists of up to 60% suspended solids. It will also make short work of water volume with a maximum pumping capacity of 933 litres per minute.
If your pool has been drained and you’re working in it with work process that involve water, it will accumulate around the plug. You could consider hiring a wet and dry industrial vacuum as this will
take care of small volumes of water. So, with these range of options for emptying your pool, what is stopping you? Go ahead and get stuck in!
