Draining pool, any submersible pump recommendations?

[tgoviper]

Greetings all,

I need to drain my pool. 3 years in the AZ climate and it's time.
It's a 13.5k gallon pool, with attached 1.3k raised hot tub.

I figured I'd just go ahead and buy a submersible pump.
Any Amazon recommendations?

Thanks in advance!

 

[TinFoilHat]

Unless you want to own your pump, I just rent one from Homer and drain into the cleanout on my house.

 

[PoolStored]

You can probably just go by amazon reviews. I just got one at HD, 1/3 HP. A sump is a great tool to have around. If your pump poops out for some reason, it can be used to circulate water and chlorinate while you fix it.

The only recommendation is to get a 12' cord to keep the connection as far away from the pool as possible. I had to put mine in the deep end for water exchange, the 12' is really helpful.

 

[ajw22]

Submersible Pumps - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

@Newdude has spotted some good pump bargains on Amazon.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

You should consider a whole house water softener and running a line outside to the pool autofill or just have a soft water spigot for refill (assuming you don’t have one already). Topping off a pool with soft water basically keeps the CH from rising and avoids the nuisance (and cost!) of having to drain and refill a pool.

 

[Newdude]

I like This guy for $83.

i used to have a 1/3 HP which did better than the 1/4s and 1/8s, but still took bloody forever. And it cost 50% more at the time than the new 1.6 HPs.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

As important as the horsepower rating is, the more crucial aspect is head loss. All submersibles have flows that are rated from basically a zero head, open discharge setup. The reality is if you just slap a garden hose on the discharge, the head loss will be so high that the flow will be not much better than what comes out of your spigot. It’ll produce great pressure, but the flow will still suck.

What I did was use a 1HP sub pump but I constructed a discharge pipe line using 1-1/4” PVC with threaded fittings at the pump and standard unions up to the water surface so I could easily assemble and disassemble it. You run the pipe straight up from the sub pumps discharge all the way to the height of the deck and then do a 90 elbow to another length of pipe that runs to wherever you want the water to go. Think of it like a giant ↱-shape. You can terminate the end of the pipe with an adapter to 1-1/2” that will then fit the standard blue discharge hose. Using straight pipe for the pump greatly reduces head loss.

In my setup, a garden hose wouldn’t do much better than 5GPM. When I use my piping manifold, I can run the discharge hose over 200ft (relatively flat terrain) to the front of my yard and still get 23GPM.

 

[PoolStored]

I concur with @JoyfulNoise. Most sump pumps come with 1-1/4" male threads on the output.