Cover Installation Question - No drain

[jamrdennis]

We recently purchased a house with an old and odd indoor pool. For a number of reasons we decided to renovate with safety being a huge factor. We hired a contractor who promised to get things done quickly and had a great looking plan.

Fast forward to today. We have a number of issues but the largest being that the contractor did not run a drain line out of of the new automatic cover box. The local cover installer indicated that we needed something (the contractor was going to have it just drain down into the dirt below the foundation it seems. I am thinking that a pump of some kind is going to be necessary as we are too far into the project to install a proper drain. My hope is to have the water pumped to the drain around the pool coping which should allow it to escape. We unfortunately don't have an electrical line running to the cover box, but I think I can run one from an existing outlet without too much tile issues.

Any thoughts folks have would be much appreciated as I have essentially had to take over this project.

 

[PoolGuyNJ]

I would wait and see. I can't see a lot of water getting in the box with an indoor pool. The bottom gets squeegeed when it rolls in. The drain is for when there is still some rain water on top making it in the box.

Scott

 

[jamrdennis]

That certainly is the easiest approach. Should a drain have been put in though or is it not necessary?

 

[PoolGuyNJ]

Depends on the dirt. If its mostly clay, yeah, I would have. If its sandy, not likely.

Scott

 

[JamesW]

Is the box concrete?

Is the cover motor electric or hydraulic?

 

[jamrdennis]

The box is concrete and the motor is electric.

 

[JamesW]

The concrete box will hold water if there is no drain or pump. There should be electric to the box if the motor is electric.

You might be able to core drill a drain through the concrete.

 

[PoolGuyNJ]

A hammer drill should do it too. I don't see a need for a core drill. They are a PITA to set up and space will be limited. The hammer drill, OTOH, won't have the space restrictions, especially if a long bit is used to keep the drill out of the box.

Scott

 

[jamrdennis]

Thanks for all the responses. I think we are going to leave it without a drain for now and use a portable electric submersible pump if necessary. If it becomes too much of a hassle, we will probably add some time of permanent pump by running a dedicated line into the box.

It seems to me the lessor of two evils is to deal with some water in the concrete box as compared to letting it drain into the dirt directly underneath the concrete. My guess is that the majority of the time the cover will be on the pool anyway as we are weekend users of our pool at best.

 

[bobby1017]

I know when I have alot of people or lots of waves quite a bit of water (guess 20 / 80 gal) gets splashed into the cover vault, it has a drain to open air downhill from the pool. When a couple people are swimming gently not much water goes in.