We are in the middle of heavy rains thanks to hurricane Harvey. The pool is almost full so I need to drain a little before water overflows and gets dangerously close to my house. There's a hose bib between filter and pump, can I simply open this and let water flow while the pump is running or there's an extra step that I should do?
Drain pool through hose bib
- Thread starter shulk
- Start date
Shulk, You're offline now, but in case you check back in, I'm answering. I'm having thre same trouble. Yes, you can open it while the pump is running. If that's an unwise places to drain, you can attach your gardenhose to the bib and drain to a better place - driveway, street, etc.
We've been draining the pool all day using a water hose attached to the spigot coming from the main pump. I also have an overflow drain at the waterline tile. This has kept us 'even' with the amount of rain coming down.
At this tiime, though, the rain is coming down faster than those two drain systems can keep up.
Is there another way to release water from the pool to avoid the pool overflowing and possibly getting water into the house?
Thank you, so very much!
Suz
We've been draining the pool all day using a water hose attached to the spigot coming from the main pump. I also have an overflow drain at the waterline tile. This has kept us 'even' with the amount of rain coming down.
At this tiime, though, the rain is coming down faster than those two drain systems can keep up.
Is there another way to release water from the pool to avoid the pool overflowing and possibly getting water into the house?
Thank you, so very much!
Suz
Plus one to what Suz says above...
The only other option is to throw in a sump pump, if you own one, or you can use the old siphon method. You know, like you used to use when you stole gas from your neighbor's car...
Fill a garden hose with water and then put one end of a garden hose in the pool and the other end down hill somewhere..
Thanks,
Jim R.
The only other option is to throw in a sump pump, if you own one, or you can use the old siphon method. You know, like you used to use when you stole gas from your neighbor's car...
Fill a garden hose with water and then put one end of a garden hose in the pool and the other end down hill somewhere..
Thanks,
Jim R.
Thanks Jim R.! We added two more hoses about 2:30am (swiped one from our neighbor, but left him a note in a zip lock baggie). We attached those to the two water feature pump hose bibs. That finally kept us even with the rain coming down (up under and touching the coping). Three hoses draining at once.
Needsajet also gave me the advice of siphoning. I never had to swipe gas, but I used to siphon all the time with an old aquarium. That would have been our 4th method to drain. I went to sleep when the rain slowed about 5. Woke up at 7 and the rain had been heavy again because the pool was lapping up on the coping again. My son had turned off the 2 water feature pumps but left the main pump on to drain by that hose. For some reason, the pump had shifted back to low speed (not sure if my son did that). So I've turned the pump back onto high and keeping up with the rain now with the one pump hose drain.
These tips may be everywhere on here now, but I'm typing fast and can't check other threads - our power has flickered on and off - so much fun. So posting here in case it's helpful to anyone now or in the future. Probably obvious to experts here, but wasn't to me.
1. hose bib to drain water from the pool: attach garden hose to spigot coming between filter and main pump. If need to drain faster to keep up with rain fall, attach hoses to each spigot from other pumps.
2. Important***** pump must be on; with my equipment, we kept the pump on high to get the greatest flow out of the hose. When the pump was on low, it was very low flow out of the hose. (we found that out by trial and error)
3. where to drain: we could not have used our deck drains to put the hose end (the deck drains that run to the street). Our street was a rushing river, so my logic (correct or not) said that water with no place to go would all back up in the deck drains. Then the rainfall on the deck couldn't drain. I could very likely be wrong about that. We ran the hoses to our long driveway which has a decent slope and no chance of pooling near the house. We didn't help the rushing street river.....
4. swg system: my salt level went too low showing up on my Jandy PDA. I have never found where I can TURN OFF the Jandy salt cell. The aqualink control panel outside would not let me lower the salt % level to 0 (the only thing I knew to do), but I could still do it by the PDA.
5. now a bleach pool: don't forget if you have a swg system and turn it off, you now need to watch the FC level. As others have said, take it up to SLAM level or at least high enough to give you wiggle room for timing of testing (using the band breaks from the storm to get out there and test or simply add more bleach)
6. skimmers: if you're dealing with storms that have bands as with hurricanes or tropical storms, use the break periods from the rain to get the debris out of the skimmers to keep the flow going well.
That's all I can think of for now. I'll add more if I discover anything else that helped my pool. I hope this will help someone along the way.
And thanks Meowloud for helping me keep my composure last night!
Everyone, everywhere, take care,
Suz
Needsajet also gave me the advice of siphoning. I never had to swipe gas, but I used to siphon all the time with an old aquarium. That would have been our 4th method to drain. I went to sleep when the rain slowed about 5. Woke up at 7 and the rain had been heavy again because the pool was lapping up on the coping again. My son had turned off the 2 water feature pumps but left the main pump on to drain by that hose. For some reason, the pump had shifted back to low speed (not sure if my son did that). So I've turned the pump back onto high and keeping up with the rain now with the one pump hose drain.
These tips may be everywhere on here now, but I'm typing fast and can't check other threads - our power has flickered on and off - so much fun. So posting here in case it's helpful to anyone now or in the future. Probably obvious to experts here, but wasn't to me.
1. hose bib to drain water from the pool: attach garden hose to spigot coming between filter and main pump. If need to drain faster to keep up with rain fall, attach hoses to each spigot from other pumps.
2. Important***** pump must be on; with my equipment, we kept the pump on high to get the greatest flow out of the hose. When the pump was on low, it was very low flow out of the hose. (we found that out by trial and error)
3. where to drain: we could not have used our deck drains to put the hose end (the deck drains that run to the street). Our street was a rushing river, so my logic (correct or not) said that water with no place to go would all back up in the deck drains. Then the rainfall on the deck couldn't drain. I could very likely be wrong about that. We ran the hoses to our long driveway which has a decent slope and no chance of pooling near the house. We didn't help the rushing street river.....
4. swg system: my salt level went too low showing up on my Jandy PDA. I have never found where I can TURN OFF the Jandy salt cell. The aqualink control panel outside would not let me lower the salt % level to 0 (the only thing I knew to do), but I could still do it by the PDA.
5. now a bleach pool: don't forget if you have a swg system and turn it off, you now need to watch the FC level. As others have said, take it up to SLAM level or at least high enough to give you wiggle room for timing of testing (using the band breaks from the storm to get out there and test or simply add more bleach)
6. skimmers: if you're dealing with storms that have bands as with hurricanes or tropical storms, use the break periods from the rain to get the debris out of the skimmers to keep the flow going well.
That's all I can think of for now. I'll add more if I discover anything else that helped my pool. I hope this will help someone along the way.
And thanks Meowloud for helping me keep my composure last night!
Everyone, everywhere, take care,
Suz
Thanks Suz. I was a little worried last night that letting water run out of that hose bib will cause some equipment damage. I was reading last night and some posts were talking about turning valves to waste and other things but since my filter is cartridge I don't have any of those. After reading your post i finally decided to turn it on and let it run. It was 4:30 when it finally leveled up with the water coming from the rains and I could get some sleep.
i hope you and your family are ok. I guess we need to brace for a little more rain.
i hope you and your family are ok. I guess we need to brace for a little more rain.
NW Houston here - Our community is draining well, but Houston National Golf Course (all around us) should be re-named Houston Lakes! Some of that water might be from my pool!!! The roads are also looking a little grim.
We'd let the water level drop naturally before the storm hit, but started pumping out yesterday afternoon. We're only just keeping up with the downpour (with the overflow drain).
Our new issues is green water! Bring on the bleach! (when the MA has brought the pH under control).
Having said all that.... I feel pretty lucky/guilty that those are my only issues. Prayers, thoughts and tears are with the thousands of flooded.
We'd let the water level drop naturally before the storm hit, but started pumping out yesterday afternoon. We're only just keeping up with the downpour (with the overflow drain).
Our new issues is green water! Bring on the bleach! (when the MA has brought the pH under control).
Having said all that.... I feel pretty lucky/guilty that those are my only issues. Prayers, thoughts and tears are with the thousands of flooded.
We're also in Houston and we pumped down our pool about 2 feet with a Sump pump before the rains hit. Of course that meant turning off the pumps. Now the breaker keeps flipping when we try and turn the pumps back on. Any suggestions?