How to drain a pool.

[richierich]

As you can see from my sig. I have a small intex pool. When we put the pool up we were so concerned with making sure the returns were near an outlet we didn't even look where the drain plug was. Now we need to drain the pool and put up another (there is a hole in the liner and I did the dye test and goggle test and can't find where its coming from) and the drain plug is basically almost touching the deck so there is no room for a hose connection to fit.

Am I just stuck with cutting a slit at the bottom and having the remaining water just gush out in one spot?

 

[Richard320]

Set up a siphon. A garden hose or two or three will work to get it down to the last few inches, wherein you get a bucket and start bailing. Just push the hose in holding the section vertical as it goes underwater so any air gets pushed out. When the whole hose is submerged, cap it with your thumb and haul it out and down below the water level and it should start going. If you have a pool vacuum hose, that will flow even more water.

You could invite a bunch of people over to help bail and have a splash fight for the last few inches.

 

[gtnos]

my father in law uses his pool vacuum hose weighted down in the center and sets his pump to waste. just make sure you are there when it goes dry so you can kill the pump. Then he has a small submersible pump he picked up at home depot for $50.00 that will get it down to about 1 inch. he also uses the submersible to pump water off his pool cover every spring.

 

[Synergy2]

Agree with the submersible pump. I use a Craftsman I got at Sears for approximately $80. You will find many other uses for this so it was a good purchase.

It works awesome and gets down to about 1/4". I just use a shopvac and then towel dry the rest when closing up for the year.

 

[mrodgers]

Duh, never thought of the method Richard320 posted on how to get the siphon going.

I use the hose that came with the pool for the vacuum and to get the siphon going, I just pressed it quickly to a shopvac.

When we had a smaller pool, I would empty it almost the entire way leaving a few inches in for weight and left it over winter outside rather than fold it up and store it. In spring, I would shopvac the rest of the water out along with any debris that was in it before scrubbing with bleach and refilling it.

 

[richierich]

thanks, I will pick up the submersible pump, there is a good one on amazon with great ratings for like $47