A win-win situation

[Richard320]

My pool is seriously overloaded with CH, so some water replacement -- while I still can, before restrictions come back-- is called for. At the same time, I'm suffering from a slow drain. The kitchen sink is way off at the end of a 2" side branch without much pitch.

So today I emptied the spa into the pool, and then started running the waste hose (garden size, not backwash size) down the kitchen sink drain. It wouldn't take much flow until I pulled the cleanout plug and started snaking it while water came down from the sink above. I hit a clump of something and got through it. Then I slowly increased the water flow. It's been running full tilt for the last hour or so. I figure 1000 gallons of water ought to do a decent job of flushing the sewer line.

Calcium reduction and drain cleaning at the same time. That's a win-win.

 

[Texas Splash]

 

[Rancho Cost-a-Lotta]

Killing two birds with one stone...genius. I'm on septic here so not as easy to drain my pool.

Enjoy your new water and clean pipes!

Mike.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Yeah, I'm at 1500ppm. I'll be draining very soon as well (maybe this week) but luckily I have enough yard in the front of my house that I'll send the water down there. My plan (if all goes according to the evil scheme I have come up with) is to slowly drain the pool using my small submersible pump and about 100ft of 5/8" garden hose while simultaneously filling the pool through the skimmer (with the weir door closed). No pumps running at all during the days this will take so I'll be adding a puck floater and chlorine. The point is to try to do a no-tarp layered water exchange. Given how high the TDS is of my pool water (4000ppm salt + 1500ppm CH + other stuff) and the fact that my municipal water has an EPA required TDS below 500ppm, there should be a decent enough density difference to keep the two layers separated....at least in theory is should. There will be a small temperature differential as our municipal water is quite warm but the pool has warmed up a bit. I would have liked to have done this over the winter months but that is when our sewerage rates are calculated (Jan/Feb/Mar) so I minimize all water use over the winter to save a few bucks throughout the year on waste rates.