I can't make out much in that pic, but it's irrelevant. The issue is if the inlets in the pool are below water, the pump should pump the water out. Usually you have skimmers and a bottom drain. Once the water level goes down below the skimmers, the pump will draw air and stop working. So, when that starts to happen, you plug off the skimmers and then the pump will draw only from the bottom drain.
I seem to recall your pool pump is located below the level of the pool. That will help. If the pump is at normal ground level and the pool is deep enough, the pool pump might not be able to lift water anymore when it gets far enough down. But with your pump downhill and your ability to siphon, I don't see why the pool pump can't drain the whole thing.
That's the idea. They have rubber expansion plugs that you can get online or at a pool store:
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Yes.
Kind of..... except for the last part. Every pool I've seen there is an outlet at the pool pump pad, usually coming right off the multi-port valve, that you use to pump water out. It typically has a blue collapsable hose on it that you drag out to wherever you want the discharge water to go. Then you set the valve to exhaust or whatever and turn the pump on. If you take a plug out at the pad, you're going to have thousands of gallons of water flowing all over, right there.
I had trouble with the math of doubling the girth because I had (erroneously) thought that by halving the diameter from
1.5 inches to 3/4 inch, I would drop the flow to a fourth.
But, looking this up, *the flow actually drops to 1/16th!*
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Coupling that with the doubling of the length from 50 feet of vacuum tubing to 100 feet of garden hose halves that still - which means it's 1/32nd of the flow it was:
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No wonder the pool is taking TREMENDOUSLY longer to drain with the puny 100 foot 3/4" garden hose than it did with the 50 feet of 1.5" diameter pool vacuum hose.
Notice, from the static stains in this picture, that the level only dropped a couple of feet in the past 24 hours:
My pool has a cloth filter so we never use the flat backwash hose:
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The pool does not have a vacuum (it's supposedly self cleaning); but the vacuum hose I am using to siphon the water out is this rigid stuff:
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You can see the blue pool vacuum hose in the top of this picture, taken just now, after I hosed down some of the exposed crud from the overnight siphoning:
I only belatedly understood what you were saying. Up until now, I was "draining" the water out at the filter pump; but that only got me to a half-empty pool. What you're saying makes sense - in that I could *PUMP* the water out, from the main drain, which is in the deep end of the pool.
My skimmers are where this pool differs from most.
My skimmers are not filtered. They have their own pump, but, the water simply goes from the top surface of the pool into the skimmers, and then to the skimmer pump, and then back out through the cleaning heads on the bottom of the pool. Note that this water does not go through the main filter. This water is unfiltered.
Actually, in "my" pool, since the skimmers have their own pump, the main pump won't draw air (I think) until it exposes the three side drains (at least two of which are companions to the bottom drains for safety reasons).
So, I think, if I understand your innovative suggestion, all I need to do is block two of the three wall drains and the floor drains in the spa.
This is making sense, except, as noted, that I don't have to plug the skimmers - but I will have to plug the wall drains.
Yes. The three pumps (filter, spa jets, & cleaning system) are all located halfway below the surface of the pool.
I had never thought about this before, but, the logic of what you're suggesting makes sense. I "should" be able to plug all the wall drains and floor drains with the exception of the deep-end floor drain ... and ... that should suck everything into main filter, which, I can leave open, where the water should spill out.
Of course, there is the problem of debris being sucked through the pipes and through the pump, clogging things up ...
I like those expansion plugs, as they should be easier to remove than would be a tennis ball.
But, I think, since my skimmers are not connected to the pool drain, I think I simply need to block the wall drains, one of which is shown in this photo of the deep end:
The water goes from the three or four wall and floor drains, to a filter canister on the deck, and from there it goes to the filter pump (which is what has the open basket of green water pouring out in that picture above).
From the filter pump, it goes past that red valve, and then into the filter, and then back to the pool.
They make owners manuals for pools? I have the owners manual for the pool pumps, and another owners manual for the filter, and yet another for the cleaning system, and yet another for the heating system, etc.
But, the pool?
I don't think they have an owners manual. Plus, mine is odd.
When I bought the house, years ago, I had pool guys come to give me estimates on maintenance work, and, it turned out that *all* of them misunderstood how the pool worked.
At times, they were perplexed because it didn't act the way they thought it should. It turned out that the self-cleaning pools are all designed around the cleaning system (which sucks, by the way ... but that's a different topic altogether).
Hi Oren, Here is a picture of my multitude of pumps, all of which stink:
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The Craftsman pump is a half horsepower non submersible, while the other three pumps are submersibles.
The problem is that they stink, in many ways. They get clogged. They leak. The Craftsman pump needs to be primed and it loses its prime all the time. The connections are puny and prone to leak. etc.
I've pretty much given up on the portable pumps. Sigh.
Hi Oren, I snapped this picture for you of all my pumps.
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I might resort to pumping out the last few feet, since the garden hose siphon is really sloooooooooooow (16 to 32 times slower than the vacuum hose siphon was).
The problem, of course, with the pumps, is that they clog like crazy, and that I have to gather up an assortment of odd fittings and connectors to get them to hook to a basic garden hose.
Plus, the darn things float around. They don't stay put in the water. What's with that? Shouldn't these things stay put when they're under the water and not float around?
Here's my assortment of connections I'm still trying out ...
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I thought it was interesting that the blue "glue" didn't work, since it is so fantastic on PVC pipe - but - the ends of those vacuum hoses are not PVC so the blue "solvent" does nothing.
I am planning on getting the Fernco today, but, I really am liking the trader4 idea of just pumping out the crud after plugging the wall drains and the spa floor drains.
Heh heh ... I "should" play smart and say that I didn't try sucking on the hoses to start the siphoning off ... and I should simply say I'm too smart to make that beginner's mistake ... but ... I DID try to suck on both the 100 foot garden hose, and on the 1.5 inch diameter vacuum hose.
No go. Not even close. It's impossible. At least for me.
What I did, with an assistant, to get the siphons started, was fill the hose with water on the deck, and then I climbed down on the outlet end, and yelled to my assistant to drop the inlet end into the water, and then I removed my hand from the outlet end, and, as long as there were no leaks at the fittings, the water gushed forth.
This works just fine to start the siphon going, but, the problem I have is that I don't have a long enough length of the 1.5-inch wide vacuum hose, and my connection for two hoses is not air tight.
Not that it matters, but the above makes it sound like you have two filters, one before the pump and one after. I've never seen that. Systems I've seen the one filter is after the pump, but then the ones I've seen have been the DE type.
I live in NJ, so the conditions are going to be different than in CA, but every year I've had the pool cover on, the pool always had a reasonable amount of algae and was a mess that took several days to get straightened out. It wasn't nearly as bad as Danny's but it was green and you couldn't see the botttom. And it took a lot of chlorine to straighten out. This year, as an experiment and because it's nicer to look at water than a cover, I winterized it, but didn't put the cover on. About once a month, I did scoup up some of the leaves that had accumulated in spots on the bottom. It was clear the whole time. I started the pool back up last week and the polaris had 90% of the debris out in just a few hours. In prior years I'd do several backwashes before it was clean. This year, no backwash yet. So, I'm re-thinking the whole strategy of using a cover. It's also quite a bit of work putting it on, taking it off, folding it up, dragging it to where it gets stored, etc.
On Wednesday, May 7, 2014 7:33:53 PM UTC-4, trader_4 wrote: So, I'm re-thinking the whole strategy of using
Very risky.
Here's what's going to happen. After a spell of cold weather, your pool water will be at 33 F.
But you'll get that one warm spring day, an unseasonal 80 . And you had friends over to grill, (well don't grill the friends, grill steaks FOR the friends), and one too many beers, and the water looks so inviting you just have to jump in.
After that you'll never leave the cover off again, if you even survive.
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