Video:When to Drain Your In-Ground Swimming Pool
with Ron Coker, Jr.Draining your pool at the wrong time can result in serious mishaps such as the pool lifting out of the ground. This video from About.com will explain the best time to drain your in-ground pool.See Transcript
Transcript:When to Drain Your In-Ground Swimming Pool
Hi, I'm Ron Coker, Jr. with Artistic Pools for About.com, and we're going to talk about when to drain your pool.
When to Drain Your Pool
You really want to drain your pool only when absolutely necessary. The only time you really might want to drain it is to stabilize total dissolved solids in the pool or perform repair or maintenance work on the interior surface of the pool. Whether you want to resurface it, or say, come in and do a live acid wash on the surface to bring out the luster of that particular surface.
When Not to Drain Your Pool
You don't want to drain the pool when it's too hot out. Say, above 88, 89 degrees, and definitely never above 100 degrees. Water can evaporate on the interior surface and leave mineral deposits which are very, very hard to get off. You also don't want to drain the pool when there's been a heavy heavy rain or many days of rain, which could raise the water table around the pool, or in a worst case scenario, lifting the pool out of the ground due to hydrostatic lifting. It only takes about 1/4 inch of water under the entire surface to lift that pool out of the ground much like a battleship floats.
How to Drain Your Pool
The trick is to drain it quick and refill it as quickly as possible once the work is done. The other thing to be cognizant of is where you drain the water to. A lot of municipalities won't allow you to drain it onto the ground, so you have to look at another way to get it to the storm sewer or some kind of a tank that can be loaded and taken off site.
I'm Ron Coker, Jr. with Artistic Pools for About.com. Thanks for watching.