Water lawn with 0 FC pool water?

[MT]

I'm in New York state, inground pool was winterized last Fall and is still covered. Will probably open in June. The water level has risen all the way to the pool deck. Just this past week we hydroseeded (grass) a large portion of our property in an attempt to expand our lawn. We only have one well on our property and we found our very quickly that our well will not keep up with the water demand for germinating new grass seed. I tested the pool water and there is 0 chlorine and PH is 7.2

Do you think that pool water is safe to use to irrigate our grass seed? I have an electric submersible pump and several hundred feet of hose and some sprinklers I can drag around and use to water the grass seed on days when it is extra hot and no rain.

 

[bradj]

Best pH For Lawns | How to Raise or Lower pH in Lawns

 

[Kiss4aFrog]

I backwash into my lawn and haven't had any issues with damage to it.

 

[Richard320]

I'd worry about the salt content. Grass seedlings are pretty sensitive. Unless you planted Bermuda Grass. Nothing can kill that stuff.

 

[MT]

ok, so from a chemistry standpoint it looks like it would be fine to do. BUT another question... My electric pump is pretty weak and I'm not getting enough water pressure to run a sprinkler with any kind of coverage. So... how about using the pool pump to feed the sprinklers? I could hook-up PVC pipe to it on a long run and step it down to garden hose size attached to a 4-way splitter to feed 4 sprinklers simultaneously. Could I damage the pump doing that? Would I be in danger of blowing out a garden hose?

 

[Richard320]

The pump doesn't much care, as long as it stays full of water. It can take more pressure than the rest of the system. And if you pop a hose, what happens? Water leaks out. Big deal. Although I suppose it could wash out your new lawn. The amount of water a pool pump can move is pretty amazing. A backwash hose becomes not unlike a firehose, very hard to control.

By the time you buy all the fittings and extra hoses, you could buy a cheap submersible pump that comes with garden hose threads on it already.

 

[bradj]

My pump system is designed to discharge water from a hose spigot on the pump discharge, no issues.

 

[tstex]

There are not too many submersible pumps made for what you are proposing. Many times they will state "do not use hose over 20-30ft. When you go 100's of feet, your pressure loss is significant, and it makes the pump work harder and stresses it. Also, if the grade is anything but either level or downhill, you can for sure forget it.

 

[MT]

Just wanted to update everyone about how things are going... Rather than mess with the pool pump, I went to Harbor Freight Tools and bought a utility pump for $80. Put one hose off the pump into the pool and another hose from the pump to a series of splitters with 8 garden hoses connected with shutoff valves. The thing shoots the sprinklers with better water pressure than my house spigot. After watering the grass seed for 5 days with nothing but my pool water (0 chlorine), we are getting a good rate of germination. Any place that has gotten watered consistently is growing grass. We got a good amount of rain last night as well, which helped. So yeah, I'd say this experiment was a success. Now if I only didn't have to burn out our water well pump along the way, it would not have been such an expensive experiment!