What's a good way to tell if a pool drain is actually working?

[Danny D.]

What's a good test of a pool drain (whether it's working or not)?

My pool is a bit complex, and, I'm trying to troubleshoot a poorly functioning (supposedly) self-cleaning system, and, one datapoint would be which of the 5 drains are working at any particular time.

I put my hands next to them, but I can't feel anything flowing. What's a good test?

Here, for the record, is a picture of the main drain (yellow) on the deep end and the main safety drain nearby on the wall (red):

Here is a picture of a drain on the wall under one of the skimmers:

And, here are two drains on the bottom of the spa:

Given there are five drains, and three pumps (filter, cleaner, and spa), it behooves me to figure out which drains are actually working properly.

Hence the question: Q: How best can we tell whether a drain is working properly at any one point in time?

[trader4]

I haven't done this, but it seems worth a try. Get an appropriate length of 1" PVC pipe and use it to pour a about a pint or so of water with blue food dye in it a couple of feet away from the drain.

[gfretwell]

Use food coloring in a small squeeze bottle. Squirt a little near the drain and see where it goes. That is the same trick you use to find pool leaks.

[gonjah]

Yup. I've been told to use the Phenol reagent (the red stuff) but I think food color is probably a better idea.

[hrhofmann]

Yup. I've been told to use the Phenol reagent (the red stuff) but I think food color is probably a better idea.

Food coloring is supposed to be non-toxic, but maybe they just haven't trie d on enough people yet to be sure, or maybe they didn't give the test subje cts enough. Everything is toxic if used to excess. But food coloring seem s to me to be the safest, easiest, and cheapest way to go.

[Bob]

On a sunny day, gently enter the pool without stirring the water too much. If the circulation is adequate the temperature will be the same from the top to the bottom. For comparison try the same test when the pump has not been running that day. Water near the top will naturally be warmer than the bottom.

[Danny D.]

Thanks to your ideas, I ran a few experiments with the suggested food coloring near the 5 drains, 2 skimmers, 15 popups, & 6 jets.

I found out what each of the 5 foot-wide drains do (3 floor and 2 wall drains) plus the two skimmers and the debris basket:

1. Floor drain (main drain, in the deep end)
2. Safety drain (on the deep-end wall near the floor drain)
3. Spa drain (main, one of two drains on the floor of the spa)
4. Spa safety (next to the floor drain of the spa)
5. Skimmer drain (on the wall just below skimmer 1)

Basically, the pool operates on two wholly separate circuits.

*FILTER CIRCUIT:* From main floor drain and secondary wall drain, to debris canister to filter pump to filter and back through four wall jets in the main pool and two wall jets in the spa and two always-on floor rotating pop-up squirters in the pool. *SKIMMER CIRCUIT:* From skimmer 1 and skimmer 1 wall drain and skimmer 2 to skimmer (aka cleaner) pump to water valve 1 to water valve 2 to 15 rotating popup squirters, timed in series by the 9-port water valves.

I'm not sure which of the two floor drains in the spa is the main as they both suck water when the main filter pump is running. I assume they're 50:50 as there isn't any way to tell the difference other than they look slightly different.

[Danny D.]

I couldn't tell which of the two spa floor drains was the main and which was the safety though, as they both seemed to suck up dye equally:

[Shay]

replying to Danny D., Shay wrote: Just for info. If you touch a main drain or swim around it, you won’t feel the water flowing nor suction. Reason being is because the covers are anti-vortex. But aside from that, main drains are not like a bathtub where it sucks in water forcefully. They pull in particals from the water, not just water. And if you have a hot tub/Spa, you might see leaves or other debris in the spa getting sucked toward the drains. This is because the drains In a spa are stronger and the jets in the spa circulate the debris. And a main drain isn’t actually a drain, it’s a housing pipe, suction outlet that goes back to the pump. Just wanted to put that out there. :)

[gfretwell]

The best (safest) way to tell is with a stick of PVC pipe. Pour some water in the top with a little food color in it with the pipe a foot or 2 from the drain. If the drain is working the color will be sucked in. If it just pools around, the drain is not working.

[trader_4]

I used food dye to figure out the approximate location of a leak in a skimmer line one time. The symptom was that small stones were showing up in the filter basket. Then I observed that dirty, mud color water showed up at the filter some seconds after the pump started. So, I put some food coloring in the skimmer, turned on the pump and counted the seconds for it to reach the filter. I also timed how long it took for the muddy water to show up. Then I used the ratio of the two times to figure that the break must be about at about 20% of the run length, closer to the pump. Maybe I didn't need to do that, because the next thing I came up with was to pressurize the line with the air compressor. Doing that, I heard hissing and bubbling and there was air coming out of the ground, right about at the predicted distance. Fortunately the spot was just short of the stamped concrete deck. Upon investigation, it looked like it was compromised when they backfilled it some years earlier. It was that flex PVC and it was crushed and broken. Had it been under the huge deck, that would have been a disaster.

[gfretwell]

I still have a little patch of grass next to my pool, right where the skimmer is because that is where most pool leaks show up. The dog likes a little grass there too. It is a comfortable place to take a nap.

[gfretwell]

All of the pool decks in the houses my wife built used pavers but that was mostly because if they did not get the back fill compacted right it was easy to pull up enough pavers to fill the low spot and get it level again. Pavers also do not crack.

[trader_4]

Another big issue with stamped concrete is that the finish does not last and wears off. My rear patio lasted about ten years, now it's painted. It still looks good and I'm happy with it, but it's not as cool looking as it originally was. When researching it many years ago, that was one key point that I didn't see. And when they put it down, you can see what happens. A base color is mixed into the concrete, then a different finishing color is sprinkled on top before they stamp it with the pattern. That top stuff is only embedded into the very top of the concrete and over time it wears off and you start seeing just the base color concrete. At some point, about ten+ years here, it starts to look noticeable and uneven. Now it's painted. It still looks good, because you have the stamped indentations that make it look like stone. But originally you had color variation that made it look even better. Maybe you can prolong it longer by re-sealing it more ofter. Did it about every 3 years here, but that's a major pain in the ass project too. Pavers avoid that. Used the good sealer stuff too, the solvent based, which you can't buy here anymore, courtesy of the green nuts.

[Rod Speed]

Wouldn’t fit, my arse isnt as obscene as yours.

<reams of your shit any 2 year old could leave for dead flushed where it belongs>