When I knew it was time to start preparing to drain our pool and take it down for the winter I began doing research for tips on how to do it because this is our first pool and I had no idea where to begin. After reading that it took some people 2 - 3 days to drain their pool with a garden hose I was expecting it to take that long for me as well so I began draining my pool via the drain and a garden hose a couple days before I planned on starting the process of drying it out and putting it indoors for the winter. I connected the hose to the drain at around 9pm and to my surprise the next morning when I went outside around 11am the pool water was all the way down to the drain. It only took 14 hours! I remember earlier in the summer the water level got too high in our pool because of rain so I connected the same garden hose to the drain to let some of the water out and it took like 4 - 5 hours just to take out about an inch of water. I think it drained faster this time because I screwed the hose into the drain further which made the drain open more which allowed the water to drain faster. So if your water seems like it is draining slowly out of your garden hose see if you can screw the hose into the drain any tighter to allow the water to flow through the hose faster.