Pool drain line

[Gordon Parks]

I recently purchased a house with a 15 X 20 inground pool that is 6 feet deep. The previous owner had a new concrete deck poured between the pool and the pool house where the pump is. During the process, the line to the bottom drain (1 1/2 inch PVC) was broken. The skimmer lines still work, and he was putting the cleaner in the deep part of the pool each night to suck the stuff off the bottom. The deck is 10 to 15 feet wide all the way around the pool and in great condition. I am looking for any ideas on how to repair the drain without tearing up the concrete. Anyone have any ideas before I start breaking concrete?

[HA HA Budys Here]

A 15 x 20 6' deep pool doesn't even need a bottom drain.

Are you sure the problem is right under the deck and not somewhere under the pool?

At any rate if you are sure it's under the deck, start chopping if you feel you need this drain so badly.

[Bill]

previous owner had a new concrete deck poured between the pool and the pool house where the pump is. During the process, the line to the bottom drain (1 1/2 inch PVC) was broken. The skimmer lines still work, and he was putting the cleaner in the deep part of the pool each night to suck the stuff off the bottom. The deck is 10 to 15 feet wide all the way around the pool and in great condition. I am looking for any ideas on how to repair the drain without tearing up the concrete. Anyone have any ideas before I start breaking concrete?

You know if you live near a fairly large city there will be contractors who have robotic tunneling devices. I have seen them tunnel under a highway so that public utilities like water departments can run a 2" pipe under a road without digging. This thing looks like a huge hose reel with a huge garden hose on it and the nozzle on the end burrows into the ground and vibrates it's way along under the ground!

Since I have a pool too, I sort of understand what you are saying is the problem. What are the symptoms? How do you know the suction line from the main drain to the pool pump is broken? You could get one of those sewer rods from Home Depot that you fish through a clogged sewer line...stick it into the piping at the pump house and slide it through the pipe until it stops...if you know how many feet of rod you have pushed into the pipe....you can measure that many feet across the pool deck and just jackhammer a small area in your pool deck to dig out underneath and repair the pvc pipe. If your sewer rod goes all the way through the pipe from one end to the other you could buy a length of

1" plastic tubing and slide it through the pipe from one end to the other. Roto-Rooter has a little camera they can slide through your pipe and you can see the break on the piping on a little television screen and the RotoRooter man can tell you exactly how many feet down the pipeline the break is...

Regards, Bill

[Bill]

Well lets see...if he ever wants to take the water out of the pool without a bailing bucket maybe he should keep his main drain in his pool? Come to think of it...I kinda like the drain in my bathtub too!

Bill

[Bruce]

Don't worry about it. It isn't necessary and if you ever drain your pool they're gonna use a pump. As for cleaning, that is what the vacuum is for.

[Schism]

he could always hook a hose to the skimmer(s) and backwash the pool to empty it.

And really, it's not like you need to empty a pool every day.

[Bruce]

You drain a typical pool like once every 5-10 years Bill and when you do, you typically use a large pump. In any event, if he wants to pump it down, he can do that with a vacuum hose attached to the skimmer.

[PrecisionMachinisT]

Ours has been in place for ~ 50 years and without a main drain

[Richard J Kinch]

This was disclosed before you bought the house? Otherwise, sue the clown.

[Dave Solly]

[e-mail] (Bruce) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I just don't understand what people are saying about the drain. You DO need the main drain functioning. How else do you expect to get the crud off the bottom of the pool? In a couple of years, you'll have a layer of mud on the bottom. May as well be swimming in a pond!. Sure, you can run a cleaner in the pool, but inless it's a suctioning kind that is connected to the skimmer, you are just throwing the bottom dirt around and hoping the skimmer picks it up. The skimmer is NOT the main cleaning input, it is to filter dust, pollen, ect. that floats on the surface of the water.

The bottom drain is NOT used to drain a pool, It is to suck the water from the bottom of the pool to be filtered!!

Also, without a functional drain pulling water from the bottom, you get a tempature layer where to top is hot and the bottom is cold. Great way to grow algie.

I have NEVER seen an inground pool without a bottom drain, and I've seen hunderds!

For the people who say they don't have drains, do you have ABOVE GROUND pools? If not, your got screwed by your pool builder.

[PrecisionMachinisT]

My pool builder has likely been dead for a few decades now........

Ours is in-ground, concrete w/ a plaster coat and fairly large~45,000 gallons est.

I vacuum the bottom, and I skim the top...........

And there is adequate circulation to keep the temperature from noticable layering top to bottom.

IIRC, the pump is a 1-1/2 hp.

[Greg]

Well, you've never seen mine. Don't be so sure that you know everything. Mine is old(pre WWII). I have an automatic pool cleaner that does a pretty good job of keeping the bottom clean and I have no algae problem. A main drain may be perferred, but it's not required to run a clean, well maintained pool.

Greg

[jdk]

had one put in 1981 and it had no drain. central ohio. used the pump and skimmer connected to a hose and pole to clean the pool. if you live in a warm climate where it does not freeze then a drain is used i believe, along with concrete where normally we use vinyl liners up here.

[Dave Solly]

Greg wrote in news:c98blj$pck$ [e-mail]:

First of all, I didn't claim to know everything. I've been looking and admiring pools starting 35 years ago. When I lived in Atlanta 30 years ago, I started looking more seriously. Then when I lived in Raleigh about

25 years ago, I wanted a pool badly and learned as much about them as I could. 20 years ago when we moved to Dallas, I had one installed. So, for the last 35 years at looking at pools, I have never seen a pool without a main drain. Granted, none of the pools were as old as yours.

Dave

[Gordon Parks]

Ours has been in place for ~ 50 years and without a main drain

[PrecisionMachinisT]

Ours has been in place for ~ 50 years and without a main drain

[HorneTD]

There is one use for a pools main drain that is seldom addressed and that is fire protection. If you do not have fire hydrants near your home then having a main drain line that runs to the proper fitting for the local fire department next to an all weather driveway or road can save you some money on your home owners insurance. So if you are having a pool built in a non fire hydranted area then check with your insurance carrier to see if the cost of the drafting hydrant type main drain will be offset by the insurance savings. The other factor in that decision is to insure that the fire service has enough water to support a rescue attempt and to protect your home from exposure to fire in a neighboring building or an approaching wild fire.

One item of caution is that it is unwise to place control of the drain at a public road were vandals can drain your pool.

-- Tom H

[Greg]

If the fire department wants to use your pool they will drop their own 4" suction line in it and use their pumper truck. They wouldn't have much use for your wimpy 1-1.5HP pump and a 1.5-2" line. The real danger is they might pump the pool dry in a few minutes and pop it out of the ground.

BTW unless you have a valve that blocks the skimmer off you will never suck water much below the skimmer throat. It is simple hydraulics. You will always suck air if there is a port higher than the water level. That is why the drain vent, required by most codes, is plumbed all the way to the bottom of the drain line, "T"ed off at the drain level.

[HorneTD]

You made an awful lot of assumptions there Greg. First the size of most fire department suction hoses is five or six inches. The four inch size is no longer used as it is only large enough for five hundred US gallons per minute (GPM). The smallest standard fire pump now made is a 750 US GPM Pump. In order to use the units suction hose they have to get within reach of the length of suction hose that they carry. The minimum length carried is usually twenty feet which allows the unit to be no further than sixteen feet from the waters edge. They have to get the intake closer if the pump is to operate at capacity and draw a significant amount of water from the pool. The pumps are designed to draw there rated capacity through twenty feet of suction hose at a height of ten feet above the water level. A permanently installed drafting line would allow the pumper to take water at a convenient point several yards away from the side of the pool. Since most pools are surrounded by fencing the water just doesn't get used until too late in the game unless a drafting connection was provided in advance.

Second I never suggested that the fire department would be using the pool's filtering pump. Those fire departments that are set up to make use of static water sources would use a portable fire pump or an eductor if they cannot draft directly from the water source by using suction hose or a drafting hydrant.

The bottom line is that in order to get insurance credit for the water it must be made available to the side of an all weather road or drive. This requires a drafting pipe with a six inch internal diameter unless the pool is a lot higher than the road so that the water would flow by gravity.

Many fire departments have a policy of not drafting from swimming pools because of the possibility of damage to the pool fence, deck, etc. When a drafting hydrant is provided by the property owner the fire department will use it. The total additional cost of a drafting hydrant up to one hundred feet away is less than one thousand dollars. Even a fifty dollar annual reduction in premiums would be made up in the twenty plus year life of an in ground pool. [Yes I know I neglected the opportunity cost of putting that thousand dollars into the drafting hydrant rather than another investment.] It's your house and your pool so check out the facts and then decide.

-- Tom H

[Greg]

Since the main drain is 1.5" or 2" what sense would it be to connect 6" pipe to it? Or are you saying you install another 6" drain? Where do they sell those?