closing / taking down summer escapes steel frame pool

[SAB]

We just took down our pool for the first time, I'm curious how others do it since it's not that easy to get all the water out, (although in the end it wasn't as bad as we thought) and I thought I'd post my experience since when I looked on here for advice I didn't find much on this topic.

It was definitely a 2 person job. All in all it took about 2 hours (excluding draining time). I thought wiping down/drying the pool was going to take a lot longer than it did but it went quite quickly and only used 3-4 bath towels.

1) attached hose to plug at the bottom to drain the pool, took about 2 days (approx 1-2" of water left in pool that wouldn't drain)
2) took down the entire frame & removed pump
3) dumped out the remaining water by lifting the pool from one side and flattening the wall on the other side as much as possible for the water to flow over
4) flip the pool upside down to get out any remaining water
5) push pool off to the side of the tarp that goes underneath it and clean off the tarp by spraying with a hose, remove most of the water with a squeegy and then dry with a towel so that tarp is very clean and dry (important since you don't want the pool getting dirty as you try to dry/clean it)
6) spread pool back out on tarp and wipe inside with towels. One person holds up one section of wall while you dry the interior walls, moving around the entire pool to dry it.
7) fold up pool, wiping exterior walls and bottom as you fold

I had read on here to store pool in a rubbermaid bin or garbage bin (to keep mice from getting to it in the garage) but ours didn't come close to fitting in either so we are keeping it in the basement.

 

[schertzy82]

I use the drain plug to get most of the water out, then i use a pump to get it down to 1/8", then I mop up what's left and let the sun dry it out. I keep the liner in the original box in the garage and have not had a problem. I do have to tie it up with twine to get it back in the box. The instructions should show you how to fold it up the same way it came in the box. If you don't mind spending around $50-$80, then I would recommend getting a utility pump from Lowe's, Home Depot, Menards, etc, to empty what the drain plugs can't reach rather than trying to tip the whole liner upside down with water still in it. That sounds like a pain.

Here's the pump I have
http://www.menards.com/main/plumbing/pu ... c-8673.htm

 

[PAGirl]

I was considering wiping mine dry while it was still up, but empty. I used to hate trying to hold up the side of the Easy Set when cleaning it before storing. I have mine drained except about 18", waiting to have enough time and sunshine to finish the takedown. Was it hard to get the fist post apart?

 

[SAB]

It was not hard at all to take the post apart, but we only had an inch or two of water left. I would have liked to wipe it down while it was still set-up but we didn't know how to get the remaining water out while keeping the pool set-up.

We did just get a replacement pump from polygroup because our pump got extremely noisy, my husband said we could use the old noisy pump (which does till work) to empty the remaining water. Wish we had thought of that before doing it the way we did rather than after. But otherwise buying a pump makes sense if you are going to be doing this every year.