River roses up higher than the street, water came into the property and joining the pool/spa

[miamicuse]

We had a historic rainstorm in south Florida yesterday. We had 26 inches of rain within 24 hours, a historic record. I am next to a river, and the river water rose up higher and higher, higher than many people's docks, streets got flooded and there was a continuous body of water from the river to the streets into my property. My pool got flooded, my spa got flooded, my garage got flooded everything that is less than 20" off the floor got flooded.





Where do I start? Do I drain everything with a sump pump and get the pool and spa empty first?

I also left the pump running for hours before I went outside to turn it off so there may be debris and dirty water in the piping, pump and filter.

 

[an1vrsy]

With your high water table, you don’t want to drain your pool. It might pop out of the ground.

 

[an1vrsy]

Oh, I am so sorry for what you are dealing with now. I hope everyone is ok.

 

[JJ_Tex]

Wow, sorry. Can you vacuum to waste? If so, I would try and get as much gunk off of the bottom as you can for starters. Then you might get lucky and be able to refill, raise the chlorine to SLAM level, and let your filter do its work on the rest.

 

[Newdude]

We had a historic rainstorm in south Florida

The news said it was a thousand year storm. Best wishes cleaning up, we will follow along and help where we can.

I'm with JJ, vac to waste water exchange is probably your best bet.

I'm also with An1vrsy that you don't want to risk the high water table. It will likely be high for some time.

 

[W.J.Christy]

Is you pool gunnite or fiberglass? If it is, you could use a plastic rake to help remove all the debris along with a net. This would at least get out any of the big stuff. From there its filter, clean, filter, slam, filter rinse and repeat.

 

[miamicuse]

Thank you for the helpful advice.

No draining the pool, got it. Good point now that the soil is saturated it's going to lift the pool out.

How about the spa? Can I drain the spa? It is probably only 4' deep at most.

Yes it was really bad. I am still somewhat in denial as I have been down here for over 30 years through many bad hurricanes and nothing was as bad as this. Water got inside my garage too and damaged many tools and materials. To give you an idea, there was 20" of water inside my garage at one point, that's so deep that even 5 gallon paint buckets filled with paint got lifted up. I have planting beds made out of 4X4 timber driven into the ground with 5/8" rebars 36" deep, and these timber got lifted out of the rebars. Never seen anything like this.

Can this water actually be cleaned? It's like swamp water.

 

[W.J.Christy]

I have seen many pools in worse shape got to blue and sparkling.

 

[Bperry]

Probably best to get as much junk out as possible before messing with the water. If the swamp water is salt, that will require exchanging it with fresh, not sure how that is done other than a no drain exchange?

 

[Mdragger88]

Precautions and Procedures During Floods - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

Contact your insurance- they may cover some cleanup costs & pool equipment if anything was damaged. Especially since your whole house was involved in the event. Pool companies have hammer head cleaners that operate independently of your equipment for jobs like this with lots of debris.
For now I would be sure all the equipment is dried out before attempting to turn anything on. Don’t want this to become more of a tragedy than it already is.

 

[JJ_Tex]

Did you ever check to see if you can vacuum to waste? That would be ideal as you could manually vacuum the mud and stuff at the bottom of the pool and bypass your filter. Then let the filter, chlorine, your pool vacuum, etc. finish the job for you.

 

[JupiterFL]

I second the independent pool company vac. Even if you vac to waste, you may still clog your pipes.

 

[Freddyfudrucker]

That is awful. I hope your clean up goes well and everyone is safe.

 

[miamicuse]

Precautions and Procedures During Floods - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

Contact your insurance- they may cover some cleanup costs & pool equipment if anything was damaged. Especially since your whole house was involved in the event. Pool companies have hammer head cleaners that operate independently of your equipment for jobs like this with lots of debris.
For now I would be sure all the equipment is dried out before attempting to turn anything on. Don’t want this to become more of a tragedy than it already is.

I have contacted the insurance, down here in Florida our home insurance is split into three insurance policies to be purchased separately. Home owners for theft fire water damages and other perils, windstorm insurance for hurricane wind driven damages like roof being lifted off your house or a coconut flies through your window at 150mph and flood insurance for rising water only. So this is a flood insurance event.

So far spoke to someone who has said someone will call me back, they don't have much info or advice because I think so many of these questions are so specific to the policy and these are probably first line phone reps. I have no idea if pool cleaning is covered, I know in 2017 hurricane Irma I had some down fences and they didn't cover that because it's not part of the main structure.

I have water intrusion into my garage and my crawlspace is a lake right now so I am dealing with those too.

I spoke to one person who does pool cleaning and he said the steps he would take is to (1) shock the pool water to clear it up enough to see the bottom (2) Use a net to scoop up the large debris like coconuts, palm fronds, twigs etc... (3) use a brush to bush all sand/silt debris at the bottom to the main drain to get it to either filtered out or open the line to let it go to waste. He charges $150 per trip and he says it might take 5+ trips to get it back. I am not so sure about this because this means all this silt will be going through the pipes and pumps.

About the spa, he said just to open the suction to the spa to drain it fully into the pool and deal only with the pool. But to get the spa water to the pool I need to run it past the pump and filter as well.

My spa is much shallower than the pool, think if I use a pump to empty it the spa will pop out or crack due to the high water table? Both pool and spa are concrete shell.

 

[miamicuse]

Is you pool gunnite or fiberglass? If it is, you could use a plastic rake to help remove all the debris along with a net. This would at least get out any of the big stuff. From there its filter, clean, filter, slam, filter rinse and repeat.

I know it has a concrete shell, is that gunnite?

 

[miamicuse]

Wow, sorry. Can you vacuum to waste? If so, I would try and get as much gunk off of the bottom as you can for starters. Then you might get lucky and be able to refill, raise the chlorine to SLAM level, and let your filter do its work on the rest.

sorry about my ignorance, what is "vacuum to waste". Do you mean a separate machine that vacuums the bottom and discharge the water outside? Is this something I can buy or rent from a pool supplies company? Or there is a service that specialize on that?

 

[Shapshftr]

Can this water actually be cleaned? It's like swamp

Yes, it can be cleaned. It will take some serious work, but it can be done. The sooner you start to SLAM it the better, to keep it from getting worse. I'd throw a robot in it to keep vacuuming it all the while. Probably will have to pull it out and clean and change filters quite often. There's no telling what the river brought with it.

 

[Shapshftr]

what is "vacuum to waste"

That simply means you turn your filter pump's valve to the waste setting and vacuum as usual. Just have to keep an eye that the water level doesn't get too low. If it does you will need to add water to continue.

 

[W.J.Christy]

I know it has a concrete shell, is that gunnite?

Yes concrete is more or less gunnite. I would rake the bottom to get the large stuff out before adding chlorine as the organic stuff will eat it faster than you can add.

Go in a gridded pattern working slowly. Once the stuff is off the bottom. It looks like you have a cartridge filter from your pics and probably don't have a vac to waste option. To help keep stuff out of the equipment, use skimmer socks in the skimmer that you will vacuum from. They will catch all the fines that you are worried about and keep them out of the pump and other equipment. Get a lot of them from Amazon and replace them often. Just discard them when overly dirty. Be sure to watch your filter pressure like a hawk. When it gets to 10% above normal try to clean it.

Once that is done and the majority of the stuff is out, start to SLAM following the directions on this site. Keep cleaning and brushing as you go.

This will take time, lots of it, but you can do it.

 

[Mdragger88]

Do you have an inline leaf canister?

If not you need to get one to prevent clogging your plumbing when vacuuming manually.
If you have a mpv (multi port valve) you may have the ability to vac to waste, waste will be listed as an option.

If not, You may need to call around for someone with a hammerhead vac that would operate independently of your equipment.
It’s florida, there’s a million pool services. The larger ones would be more likely have one as it’s pretty expensive.