New pool, 2 tests, 2 different results

[Cmcgrew]

Draining - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

Scroll down to the section "No Drain Water Exchange."

Thank you! It mentions not using your pool pump to drain the water. I don't have any other way to drain the water. Is using a different submersible pump required? Is there anything I can do that would make using my pool pump okay? I am hoping to have this cost as little as possible (we just moved and are trying to stick to a pretty strict budget).
My plan was to just turn on the waste to drain it to the street while then turning on the hose that leads directly into the pool. It seems so much more complicated than I thought after reading that.

 

[Dirk]

The hose will not be able to keep up with the amount of water your pump will remove.

You can use two hoses, it'll just take longer. One for filling, the other as a siphon, assuming you can find a place where the siphon hose's exit end can be lower than where you need to put the suction end in the pool.

A $50 pump from Amazon can do the trick. Home Depot also rents the type of pump you need, though I don't know for how much. This isn't a multi-hundred dollar project.

 

[YippeeSkippy]

You can rent a pump at Home Depot. It may be bigger (faster) than most small pumps folks buy though.

 

[TishTash]

Here are the levels from [the pool store]:
Total Chlorine: 3.0 ppm
Free Chlorine: 3.0 ppm
Combined Chlorine: 0 ppm
pH: 7.4
Alkalinity: 100 ppm
Calcium Hardness: 275 ppm
Stabilizer: 100 ppm
Dissolved solids: 400 ppm

So when I put it into pool math, it is telling me to do all sorts of things, including draining the pool to decrease CYA, adding 466 oz of calcium Chloride and 54oz of Borax.

The draining to decrease CYA makes sense, but given those TA and pH levels, I have no idea how you got PoolMath to recommend adding that much calcium and borax. Mayhaps you input some typos?

Anyway, if you don’t want to get a pump, I get just as much success siphoning the water with a hose. It takes a little time, but it gets the job done. Then when you get the water low enough, start filling with the hose.