Pool flooding

[newbiepo0lowner]

Hi!

We’re in a major storm right now and our pool has flooded! All the nearby stores are out of the submersible utility pumps so SOL..

Wondering if there is a way For us to use our Pentair VSP intelliflo pump to drain the water out to the street or even drain to waste? I’m not even sure how to begin..

We have a robot so I thought maybe we can turn on the pump but pull the robot out but feel like that is just going to cycle the water back onto the ground. We’re flooded about 1.5 inches above ground right about now. We do have a pool pump hose that we recently bought for vacuuming the pool but I think that just vacuums back to the filter.. what are my options here?

Feeling pretty helpless.. and it’s going to continue heavy storm for the next 12 hours..

 

[mknauss]

If you can drain to low area, you can use the vac hose as a siphon.

Do you have a hose bib between the pump and filter? As an emergency, you can use that. Just get a utility pump for the future.

 

[mknauss]

Precautions and Procedures During Floods - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[newbiepo0lowner]

If you can drain to low area, you can use the vac hose as a siphon.

Do you have a hose bib between the pump and filter? As an emergency, you can use that. Just get a utility pump for the future.

I checked earlier and we do not have an obvious hose bib anywhere on our pump. That means we cannot drain to waste, right?

Definitely going to get a utility pump on the future..

 

[Danimal92Sport]

Any thoughts on the siphon idea? Do you have an area lower than your pool you can drain to? I set one up with a garden hose today to drop my pool level 1”. Though a garden hose creates a very slow siphon compared to something larger like a vac hose. I turned my pump on full speed, put the garden hose over the return jet to fill the hose and then after about 30 seconds the hose was full enough to have started the siphon.

 

[newbiepo0lowner]

Any thoughts on the siphon idea? Do you have an area lower than your pool you can drain to? I set one up with a garden hose today to drop my pool level 1”. Though a garden hose creates a very slow siphon compared to something larger like a vac hose. I turned my pump on full speed, put the garden hose over the return jet to fill the hose and then after about 30 seconds the hose was full enough to have started the siphon.

Waiting for my husband to come up to start the siphon asap. Wish us luck. We have a 40 feet hose and will siphon the hose down the driveway to see if that works.

 

[Danimal92Sport]

Perfect, see if the return jet will help you get it started.

 

[Bperry]

Waiting for my husband to come up to start the siphon asap. Wish us luck. We have a 40 feet hose and will siphon the hose down the driveway to see if that works.

If you have a filter that drains to waste, you can certainly use it. I do it all the time to drain off a bit of water and get a free backwash out of it. But if the waste port drains to a flooded area, that won’t help obviously.

 

[newbiepo0lowner]

It doesn’t seem like pump have a pump to waste option and no visible outlet that we can attach a hose to waste.

The siphon didn’t work for us since water have to travel sorta up and out.

BUT in case this helps anyone else in the future, we were able to rig our robot hose to our vacuum hose and use the pump to push the filtered pool water through the robot house and out to the driveway leading to the street.

My husband was able to use weights to hold to hose in position (otherwise won’t hold itself) and ran the pump at quick clean cycle for a hour to bring the flooding down 6-8 inches from the top of the pool. This should hopefully keep us from the pool flooding through the morning. Not the best solution but it worked for us tonight.

 

[mknauss]

Good job. Did not know you had a pressure cleaner. That is not a robot. Might want to change your signature later.

 

[jmastron]

Glad it worked. This is crazy rain! Ours is 1/2 to 1" from the top of the coping (as of an hour ago). I'm actually going to let it because I'm curious where it will flow -- there's a good slope down the deck in all directions and there house is far away so no issues there. I did pick up tools and things on the floor of the cabana where it's likely to pass.

In theory once the pool is full it's no worse than water flowing off a patio of the same size; it's not like a dam bursting and the full volume escaping. I do have a submersible pump (somewhere) and a valve and hose fitting on the filter's drain plug that I've used to lower the level.

What brand/model of cartridge filter do you have?

 

[YippeeSkippy]

WoW.... California finally gets rain!~ Yay!!

Good time to use some of that rain to lower folks high CYA a bit....drain the pool a little and use rain water to fill'er back up.

 

[Bperry]

Glad it worked. This is crazy rain! Ours is 1/2 to 1" from the top of the coping (as of an hour ago). I'm actually going to let it because I'm curious where it will flow -- there's a good slope down the deck in all directions and there house is far away so no issues there. I did pick up tools and things on the floor of the cabana where it's likely to pass.

In theory once the pool is full it's no worse than water flowing off a patio of the same size; it's not like a dam bursting and the full volume escaping. I do have a submersible pump (somewhere) and a valve and hose fitting on the filter's drain plug that I've used to lower the level.

What brand/model of cartridge filter do you have?

If you have a cantilever concrete deck which isn’t sealed against the pool structure, water can leak under the coping and cause issues. Be careful in that case.

 

[jmastron]

If you have a cantilever concrete deck which isn’t sealed against the pool structure, water can leak under the coping and cause issues. Be careful in that case.

Good point. The water level was down some this morning after the storm (I don't believe it overflowed), so likely some escaped below the coping. I'm not too worried because I'm sure it's gotten that high other times since 1963, and there's enough slope on the deck and yard on all sides to not worry about ponding mixing yard debris into the pool. But I did open my filter drain valve and lowered the water level onto the top tile this morning.

In any case, to the OP, I'm glad you found a solution. That was a crazy day of rain for here (5+ inches in 24 hours, breaking the previous record set in 1880). For those in other places, our normal *yearly* rainfall is ~18 inches, almost all of it from November through March. In a normal year, I only have manually drain once or twice because the spread out extra water is balanced by evaporation. The last 2 drought years I didn't drain at all.

Time to go test chemicals!

 

[newbiepo0lowner]

Glad it worked. This is crazy rain! Ours is 1/2 to 1" from the top of the coping (as of an hour ago). I'm actually going to let it because I'm curious where it will flow -- there's a good slope down the deck in all directions and there house is far away so no issues there. I did pick up tools and things on the floor of the cabana where it's likely to pass.

In theory once the pool is full it's no worse than water flowing off a patio of the same size; it's not like a dam bursting and the full volume escaping. I do have a submersible pump (somewhere) and a valve and hose fitting on the filter's drain plug that I've used to lower the level.

What brand/model of cartridge filter do you have?

Hi Neighbor! I believe we have a Clean and Clear Plus Cartridge Filter (CCP520).

Curious what you do during the colder-non swim season. There is no such thing as "closing" the pool in California, right? This is our first year in our house with a pool!

 

[jmastron]

Hi Neighbor! I believe we have a Clean and Clear Plus Cartridge Filter (CCP520).

Curious what you do during the colder-non swim season. There is no such thing as "closing" the pool in California, right? This is our first year in our house with a pool!

Right, at least in this part of CA it doesn't freeze enough to require draining/flushing pipes (the few days that go even into the 20s for a few hours get well above freezing the rest of the day). Some still put the tight safety covers on for child/pet reasons but most stay "open". The main things to take care of are:

Solar cover: I take it off and make sure the tarp over it is secure with extra bungees (have had it blow off enough to have the sun ruin it).

Chemical management: In theory algae doesn't grow in water colder than 60 F, but I like to keep the chlorine levels normal or even a bit high. With cold water and low sun angles not much is consumed so that's really easy to do -- I only test the water every couple weeks (FC and pH only; I wait til spring to recheck CH, TA, CYA that don't change much). My water temp gets down to 42-45 sometime in January before rising again.

Water level management: I don't usually have to add much during the winter, and most years only drain a few times when it gets to the top of the tile. I replaced the drain plug in my CCP420 with a valve and hose attachment (you can find my thread about the parts used) so I just open that with the pump running for a half hour or so to drop an inch or two.

Leaf management: Our big leaf drop is in mid-November to mid-December, where the previous Polaris 280 couldn't keep up (partially because I don't get out to empty the bag every day). Once or twice a winter, I use the leaf skimmer (one with a deep non-fine net) to scoop out the bulk from the floor, then run the Polaris to do the fine cleaning. I'm assuming I'll need to do similar to help out the new Dolphin E30. After that it's generally good to go.