thinking of emptying pool

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outdoorsgal

LifeTime Supporter
Jan 24, 2015
943
Phoenix, AZ
We've had our pool for almost 3 years. I've been told on this site that there is no reason to dump pool water. However, we appear to not being doing the greatest job with the pool and I don't have much help getting the salt cell off to clean it so if I am going to need to clean it every 2-3 days and my water isn't balanced soon I am thinking that I am running out of options. We didn't check the water enough throughout the winter and pool turned green again. I did a SLAM without having to ask for help on this site since I've already been helped in the past. (Thanks!! :)) I have been adding about 60 oz acid once or twice a day for at least 2 weeks and pH continues to shoot right back up to 8.2 within a day. I was successful at getting TA down from 130 to 90, still trying to get it down to 60/70. We have cleaned salt cell 3 xs this mth. The last time we cleaned it was Wed and when I looked at the panel the next day it was saying "low salt." By today it is saying "salt cell off" "very low salt." It's going to get hot fast so I need to see if I can get the water balanced ASAP to where the pH will stay down and not struggle like this through the summer otherwise we need to empty the pool before the weather gets too warm for the pebbletech.

today's #s:
FC = 8
CC= 0
pH= 8.2
added acid, waited 45 min then:

pH= 7.6 (I don’t know why it doesn’t get down the number I intend by using pool math) 14.5% 1440 gallon pool-added 60 oz.
CH=1175
Salt= 3800
CYA=50
CSI .41

Off to add 57 oz acid to get pH down to 7.2 and CSI to .03. Maybe my husband didn’t clean the salt cell well? He thought he had. We’ve been cleaning it so often. Or could it be on it’s way out? Thx!
 
Once the pH hits 8.0 or above it is very difficult to judge what the real number is. Once the pH is down to 7.6 add enough acid to reduce the pH to 7.2 and see what the water measures 30 minutes later. If the pH stays higher than it should most likely the gallons in the pool are more than you think.

The cell might be going out or it could be scale. After making sure the cell is clean, read the diagnostics and see what the instant salinity is. After you get the first reading on the salinity turn the SWG switch off and back on. Read the instant salinity again once it settles down and see how much difference the two readings are and post them.

What is the fill water CH, might be time to replace most of the water?
 
Thank you. I looked on this site and all I could find under maintenance was for CH was: Appropriate levels help prevent plaster damage. High levels can cause calcium scaling. (220 to 350ppm, vinyl lower). I thought I had been guided that as long as a pool owner can leave a pool balanced there is no need to empty the pool. I'm starting to think I'd better get a pump and empty it Monday night since Tues temps will only be in the 70s. The rest of the week it's in the 80s and 90s. I feel as though we've been fighting against the CH for a while and cleaning the filter so often can't be good for it. we're spending so much $ on acid and now having to use chlorine since the salt filter isn't working (i bet due to calcium), i'm leaning towards emptying the pool. It's just interesting I've gotten different suggestions on this but that was last year so maybe there is a limit a far as CH. No TFP cut and dry rule regarding CH and emptying pool? folks in AZ seem to empty their pool yearly or every 2 yrs. We can't locate a clean-out and tried to get a permit and never got a call back from the city so I guess we'll be emptying the pool at night and crossing our fingers.

Ping, as for the gallons, that's what the pb told us and that seems right according to the size of the pool which is rectangle only with a baja shelf so i can't figure out if i'm doing something wrong. :( I buy acid at lowes or HD. as for a switch, there is no switch and no reset button like the manual says. I think I am supposed to press the up arrow when it says "low salt" but nothing seems to happen.

Thx!
 
As far as emptying the pool, I guess my plan would be to go to Harbor Freight and get a submersible pump, use an extension chord so that it reaches the pool, get one of the blue flat hoses that we use to empty the DE filter at the pool store, get a clamp to close that onto the submersible pump? I'll do it at nighttime while we're sleeping and the temps r lower (and everyone else is sleeping since we don't have time to get a permit) so maybe i'll set my alarm to get up in the middle of the night to make sure all is going well. I'll do the math and try to get a pump that will at least pump out the water in a night. thx for any tips!
 
I'm not weighing in on whether you should empty your pool or not, or by how much. But if you do empty it, and empty all of it, then just before you start your fill, go out and read your water meter. Or take a picture of it. Start your fill, don't take any showers, or water the garden. Keep track of toilet flushes, use as little water as possible. Then when the fill is done, go out and read the meter again. Do the math on the two meter reads, subtract a gallon or so for every toilet flush, and you'll be able to determine within about 1% what the actual volume of the water in your pool is.

Please be aware that an empty pool is subject to the possibility of various mechanical and physical problems, so proceed with caution...
 
High ch is pretty much the only reason to drain a pool, it can be managed at 1000-1500 but it is very hard and definitely a expert kind of ordeal. You should just do a drain, much easier.

Make sure of your water table or use the tarp method
 
Dirk said:
I'm not weighing in on whether you should empty your pool or not, or by how much. But if you do empty it, and empty all of it, then just before you start your fill, go out and read your water meter. Or take a picture of it. Start your fill, don't take any showers, or water the garden. Keep track of toilet flushes, use as little water as possible. Then when the fill is done, go out and read the meter again. Do the math on the two meter reads, subtract a gallon or so for every toilet flush, and you'll be able to determine within about 1% what the actual volume of the water in your pool is.

Please be aware that an empty pool is subject to the possibility of various mechanical and physical problems, so proceed with caution...
Click to expand...

that's a great idea. thx!

- - - Updated - - -

cfherrman said:
High ch is pretty much the only reason to drain a pool, it can be managed at 1000-1500 but it is very hard and definitely a expert kind of ordeal. You should just do a drain, much easier.

Make sure of your water table or use the tarp method
Click to expand...

thx! that's what i'm seeing: seeming to take a lot of work and beating up my salt cell by trying not to empty the pool. I could easily add acid 3 xs/day right not to try to keep the pH where it needs to be. I'm not aware of the water table or tarp method. Could you pls fill me in on those?
 
No need to concern yourself about the water table or tarp method in Phoenix AZ. The water table is well below 20 feet even on your side of town - so pretty much zero chance of that being an issue.

If you don't already have one, pick up a decent sump pump at Harbor Freight - or rent one at Home Depot. I have heard the rental from Home Depot comes with two 50' length of hose - but haven't verified that. If you want to buy the thin blue backwash hose, check Home Depot or a local pool store. Pool stores may have it in a 100' roll.

Salt you can get at HD - the Solar Salt crystals. Just make sure it doesn't have any additives to clean or to make a water softener work "better". Buy the smallest crystals with the best purity. Use Pool Math to calculate how much salt will be required.

Walmart has stabilizer granules (Chlorox brand, listed as 100% cyanuric acid) for under $15/canister (4 pounds). You will need 2 of these if you do a full drain. Those 2 canisters (8 pounds) will provide a CYA approximately 70 or a little less. Don't forget to grab 2-4 gallons of the Chlorinating Liquid (10%) while you are at Walmart (it's probably cheaper than their regular 6% bleach per gallon). You will use the chlorine/bleach for your initial dosing of FC while waiting for your salt to dissolve for 24 hours after adding the salt.

There should never be a need to clean the SWG as often as you are. You need to re-align the time and effort spent cleaning the SWG (and shortening its life in the process) and put that time and effort into keeping your pH, TA and other chemicals in balance. You're really expending pretty much the same amount of time and effort - whether you keep the chemicals in balance and reduce scaling or let the chemicals go and continuously clean the cell - but greatly reducing the stress on yourself and saving untold $$$ by keeping the chemicals in better balance.

Please run a test of your fill water - pH, TA and CH - and post it here. We can then provide suggestions for target numbers to shoot for. I'm betting keeping your TA in the 60-80 range (with a proper pH) will help prevent the cell from scaling as much as it has been.

If you can get the pump and hose later today and start the drain early this evening, you should be ready start the refill tomorrow morning sometime. The first few days of this week will be best for you draining and refill.

Keep the forums posted of your progress.
 
There you are, Gene! :)
Thx for all the info. I just read another thread from someone in Phx having a similar situation and wasn't sure if it was most appropriate to post on their thread or start a new one but now I have questions regarding water softeners and I'm wondering if I should quickly try to install a water softener this week if at all possible and then fill the pool? Ironically my husband was just talking with some folks about this last night and he's wanted a water softener for years. I looked at it as another thing to maintain and a luxury. He wants one to maintain appliances better, plumbing, and for soft skin. I was just reading that someone's kid's eczema is now better with the water softener. I need to research how much water is wasted with a water softener and decide if it would make sense to get one. If it makes hubby happy it seems we prob don't need to put much thought into this and we should just get one and then fill the pool if I can do this quickly enough otherwise take our time with the water softener and fill the pool now and plan to refill again in another 3 yrs.

I understand what you're saying about spending he same amt of time now than if we would've kept everything balanced. I think part of what happens is not having realized (or forgotten-I seem to forget a lot that I am trying to learn from this site) that we do need to maintain pool more in the winter than I think. It didn't seem to be as much of a problem until I started really being faithful and adding acid sometimes twice a day. What I'm learning from reading, though, is it may have been making things harder that I've been trying to drop the pH to 7.2 to lower the TA faster cuz then the pH would rise higher. Along with putting the bubbler on this time, thinking I was going to get my water balanced really fast I was confident that even though we didn't stay on top of things, with the knowledge I have acquired here, I could get it to where there was no scale as I was getting close to a 0 CSI. Now I'm confused again a bit but it's all coming together. I need to read/learn more about the CH/pH relationship or lack of relationship and what's really plugging up the salt cell so quickly. It still doesn't make sense to me as I got the TA closer to where it to be and I thought I was on top of the pH and at the pool a couple of times daily trying to stay on top of it, the salt cell seemed to be doing worse, not better. So, with this I figured I am learning a lot here but not having been as good as I should with the pool draining the pool seemed like the best option. Even with the salt cell doing worse by the minute I'm getting closer to understanding.

Any thoughts on waiting to refill for a water softener? I've read 85 degrees is the limit for emptying a pebbletec pool. i'll measure tap water and post in a bit. Thx!

- - - Updated - - -

Regarding emptying the pool, why not just backwash the pool? If I wanted to empty it really fast I could buy a submersible pump and backwash at the same time? Or is that too hard on the DE filter and pump? I also have a spicket (if I'm using the right terminology) that comes out of the pump but that would likely be slow. I think the pb said they put it on the equipment just for the something at installation but again, there goes my memory. Makes no sense why they would put a spicket just for one time of use. Does anyone use that to empty pool? Especially since the temps r increasing I'd want to empty as fast as possible. I went to Harbor Freights a mth ago or so and I'd prob just buy a pump to have around.
 

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You can't fill a swimming pool with a water softener (not a residential one, anyway). They have to regenerate after so many gallons softened, and a pool fill would far exceed what a softener could come up with. Besides, your pool needs CH anyway.

But you can top off a pool with soft water (from a residential softener). It's how I keep my CH in check. My fill water is CH350, and that's about where my pool likes to be. But if I kept refilling evaporated water with CH350 water, then eventually my CH would collect and exceed a healthy level (because CH doesn't evaporate).

So if you want to pursue that, then you can add the softener later, anytime after the fill. I write about how I did it, extensively, in another thread. Short version: I replumbed my auto fill system and connected that to my softener. If this all works, my water could stay pretty close to CH350 indefinitely.
 
Dirk said:
You can't fill a swimming pool with a water softener (not a residential one, anyway). They have to regenerate after so many gallons softened, and a pool fill would far exceed what a softener could come up with. Besides, your pool needs CH anyway.

But you can top off a pool with soft water (from a residential softener). It's how I keep my CH in check. My fill water is CH350, and that's about where my pool likes to be. But if I kept refilling evaporated water with CH350 water, then eventually my CH would collect and exceed a healthy level (because CH doesn't evaporate).

So if you want to pursue that, then you can add the softener later, anytime after the fill. I write about how I did it, extensively, in another thread. Short version: I replumbed my auto fill system and connected that to my softener. If this all works, my water could stay pretty close to CH350 indefinitely.
Click to expand...

That's all great to know and understand. It sounds like we're likely going to want to install a water softener later as it sounds like a great plan so I will research more. Good to know we don't need to rush!
 
I measured tap water, coming from kitchen (that should be the same water that goes to pool, right? I ask because my husband was wondering if the water going out to the yard and the pool would also be softened or is it just water inside the house? This question might get answered from researching Dirk's thread regarding installation).

This is what I got:
pH 8.2
TH 50
CH 225. I did this test twice as I was surprised it was so low! If it was 225 initially it's taken less than 3 years to raise to 1175.
 
outdoorsgal said:
I measured tap water, coming from kitchen (that should be the same water that goes to pool, right? I ask because my husband was wondering if the water going out to the yard and the pool would also be softened or is it just water inside the house? This question might get answered from researching Dirk's thread regarding installation).

This is what I got:
pH 8.2
TH 50
CH 225. I did this test twice as I was surprised it was so low! If it was 225 initially it's taken less than 3 years to raise to 1175.
Click to expand...

See? So you'll need that CH225 for the first fill of water in the pool.

I don't know how to calculate the CH rise, but the more your water evaporates, the faster it'll collect CH. Plus, it might be that CH varies from season to season in our area, as it does in mine. Here it has to do with where they extract the water from throughout the year (lake vs ground).

How old is your house? Was it plumbed for a softener? Newer houses (here in CA, anyway) generally have a water softener hookup area in the garage. Mine looked like a "U" of 1" copper pipe coming out of the wall, about 4' high, with a sewer drain just under that, usually black APS with a plug in it. Sometimes they're in the yard, on an exterior wall.

Does your house have hose bibs, coming out of the siding? Or faucets on pipes coming out of the ground?
 
Let's not worry about water softeners for now. Best to stay keenly focused on your drain/refill and better managing your chemical balance.

You have to remember, with our very dry and hot climate, you can evaporate your entire pool water capacity (and maybe more) every year. So let's say your initial fill water had a CH of 225 (this can vary from year to year and even month to month). So 3 years later you have evaporated your entire pool at least 3 times. But the CH never evaporate with the water and continues to add up.
225 - initial fill
225 - after year 1
225 - after year 2
225 - after year 3

That equals a CH of 900 - in 3 years - factor in that there are times the evaporation rate is higher and/or the CH of you fill water is higher and being at a CH of 1175 after 3 years is certainly a real possibility.

On the CH, are you sure you completee the test to its end point? The blue color should be at its most intense - not just slightly blue.

Also, please double check that TA test again as that seems low for our area. Did you count drops until the color turned to Barbie pink - not just slightly pink? If you fill water TA is truely 50, your pool water TA couldn't be 90 unless you purposely added something to raise it.
 
Dirk said:
See? So you'll need that CH225 for the first fill of water in the pool.

I don't know how to calculate the CH rise, but the more your water evaporates, the faster it'll collect CH. Plus, it might be that CH varies from season to season in our area, as it does in mine. Here it has to do with where they extract the water from throughout the year (lake vs ground).

How old is your house? Was it plumbed for a softener? Newer houses (here in CA, anyway) generally have a water softener hookup area in the garage. Mine looked like a "U" of 1" copper pipe coming out of the wall, about 4' high, with a sewer drain just under that, usually black APS with a plug in it. Sometimes they're in the yard, on an exterior wall.

Does your house have hose bibs, coming out of the siding? Or faucets on pipes coming out of the ground?
Click to expand...

Our house was built in 78. We have hose bibs coming out of the side of the house which is block, no siding. I tried to look up your post on water softeners but couldn't find it. Maybe if I do a search later, but do u remember about when u wrote it? thx
 
outdoorsgal said:
Our house was built in 78. We have hose bibs coming out of the side of the house which is block, no siding. I tried to look up your post on water softeners but couldn't find it. Maybe if I do a search later, but do u remember about when u wrote it? thx
Click to expand...

proavia, a TFP guide, is on your case now and has suggested we hold off on the soft water angle and get through your original concern first. So I'll defer to Gene.

We figured out that you don't need to deal with a new softener for your fill, so we can come back to this a bit later.

This is the thread, for future reference:

Water softener connected to auto fill, and new plaster start up.

Unfortunately it morphed into the entire tale of my indoctrination into TFPC, but the actual connection to my softener is described in post 76...
 
proavia said:
Let's not worry about water softeners for now. Best to stay keenly focused on your drain/refill and better managing your chemical balance.

You have to remember, with our very dry and hot climate, you can evaporate your entire pool water capacity (and maybe more) every year. So let's say your initial fill water had a CH of 225 (this can vary from year to year and even month to month). So 3 years later you have evaporated your entire pool at least 3 times. But the CH never evaporate with the water and continues to add up.
225 - initial fill
225 - after year 1
225 - after year 2
225 - after year 3

That equals a CH of 900 - in 3 years - factor in that there are times the evaporation rate is higher and/or the CH of you fill water is higher and being at a CH of 1175 after 3 years is certainly a real possibility.

On the CH, are you sure you completee the test to its end point? The blue color should be at its most intense - not just slightly blue.

Also, please double check that TA test again as that seems low for our area. Did you count drops until the color turned to Barbie pink - not just slightly pink? If you fill water TA is truely 50, your pool water TA couldn't be 90 unless you purposely added something to raise it.
Click to expand...

Gene, You know me, I tend to do a few things at once. For example, I asked the pool company if they can come out to repair the tiles that were broken when they put in the pool. They said we had 3 yrs for the repair and that it might be better to wait so that we could allow for more settling, which we did and now our pool warranty will end in June, so before we filled above the tile line it seemed to make sense to have them out Tuesday. We'll see if they'll do so.

As for the chemistry, I'll recheck. I thought I was told to measure the first sign of blue. I thought it didn't get much bluer at all but I can check. As far as pink, same thing, I just measured first sign of all pink when there was no green left.

thx!
 
As for the chemistry, I'll recheck. I thought I was told to measure the first sign of blue. I thought it didn't get much bluer at all but I can check. As far as pink, same thing, I just measured first sign of all pink when there was no green left.
Click to expand...

Nope... measure when the last drop you put in doesn't change the color anymore. For example with my TA it will give a "hint" of change then go back to green, then go kinda red, then it goes BRIGHT BARBIE PINK! and no other change after that no matter how many drops I add. So after it goes "Barbie Pink!" I add another drop. If it doesn't change (get any brighter or redder) I don't count that last drop.

So make sure you test yourself with another drop after you *think* you're done, just to see if it changes any more.

Maddie :flower:
 

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