Hydrostatic Valve

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audiemcg

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Apr 9, 2015
3
Pennsy;vania
I have a 15 x 18 concrete pool that is about 25 years old. We are going to give it a much needed paint job this spring.
As a few weeks ago we noticed the pool lost about 1/2 of its water and we had absolutely no issues over last winter with water loss.

For the life of us we cannot locate our hydrostatic valve when it comes time to empty and paint the pool. Is it possible that the pool does not have one and if not, what are our other options?

Thank you for any information you can give.
 
Welcome to TFP!

The hydrostatic valve, if there is one, would be underneath the main drain, and not necessarily at all easy to access. They are hardly universal, I'd guess that less than 1/3 of pools have one.

There are various approaches to avoiding the pool floating when draining an in-ground plaster pool. In some areas the ground water table is know to be lower than the bottom of the pool and you don't need to do anything. Other times you might install well points with sump pumps to lower the water table locally. Or you might have a hydrostatic valve. Or you might drill temporary holes in the pool to allow ground water to equalize.

By the by, we don't recommend painting a pool. Paint hardly ever lasts long enough to justify the cost.
 
In my case the relief for ground water is a pipe under the main drain that goes into the ground that is capped.

The recommendation would be to have the pool replastered instead of painting it. Cost vary widely based on your location and of course the size of your pool, for example I have seen a thread where the quote to replaster a pool in Texas was $6,000 and others where the quote was $10,000 in another part of the country. I also watch HGTV a lot and of course whenever they are renovating a pool they need to replaster and that is around $10,000 as well, but that is normally in CA.

It is recommended that you get multiple quotes and ask plenty of question to your vendors.
 
At 25 years old, i doubt you have a hydrostatic valve. If you lost 1/2 of your pool water, you likely have a leak and should find that before any resurfacing decision.

The reports on this forum show over and over that paint is somewhere around a 1-4 year fix with maybe 2 being an average. Plaster is 10+ years but, of course, the price is much higher.
 
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