How To Drain and Clean A Swimming Pool

-Hey, pool owners In this video, we're going to show youhow to drain and clean your swimming poolIn a previous videowe showed you how to clean a green pool by bringing the chlorine up to shock leveland continuously cleaning the filter until all the algae was removedIn this video we will drain all the water from the pooldo a chlorine wash on the wallsrefill and balance the water chemistry

Let's go ahead and get started-Okay A couple of things to consider before you drain a pool isyou probably don't want to do it if you've had a lot of rain because the water table could be high What that means is if you have a shell of a pool sitting empty and the water table is high underneath itit could potentially pop the shell out of the ground

We've seen that happen in Florida from time to timeAnother thing you want to keep in mind iswhen you're draining ityou want to drain the water far away from the pool You don't want to just drain it right next to the poolbecause then you could be dumping 20,000 gallons of water right next to the pool, and that couldagain, go underneath the pool and cause some problems Those are the things you want to keep in mind before you drain


All right, to drain this poolwe're going to be using a sump pump Sump pumps are really easy to useBasically, you plug them in You connect a hose to themand you drop it in the waterand it drains the pool

If you don't have a sump pump and you have a sand or DE filterthose are easy to use your existing pool pump to drain the poolWhat you want to do is you put the backwash valve in the drain position and turn on your pool pump and make sure you're only pulling water from the main drain That way, you're not pulling water from the skimmer or pulling air from the skimmer once it drains below the skimmer Let's go ahead and continue

All right, so to set up the sump pumpyou can get a hose fittingthread it in thereThen we've got a backwash hose that will slip over the fitting We got this metal clamp and we'll tighten that downAll right, we're just going to roll the hose out to the far corner of the yard where it's downhill

All right, we're going to startby dropping the sump pump into the shallow endThe cord isn't that longand you don't want the end of it to be in the waterso as it drainswe're going to move it to deeper water We're going to go ahead and drop it in[pool draining]As you can see, most of the pool waterhas been drained out just down to a couple of inches

We're going to remove the drain cover and remove the plug that's underneath the drain cover That's basically to prevent the shell from popping outif there was any pressure underneaththat water would bubble up through the main drainAll right We're using a clean-out plug wrench right now

It has a connection for inch and a half or two inch plugsI'm just going to remove that plug from the bottom drainThis was

the plug that was underneath the main drain coverWe removed that so if there's any pressure underneathany water, if I have a high water tablethe water's going to come up through that main drain

We're going to start with just regular garden hosejust spraying some of the larger debris downto the bottom of the pool so we can pump it out You can use a regular nylon deck brush to get the more stubborn spotsAgain, it's going to be easier if the surface is a little wetEverything that we've pressure washed and brushed is piled up near the main drain

We're going to use the sump pump and suck it up out of hereWe're down the last bit of waterand what we have to do is keep diluting itand pumping it out because just the water level's not high enough for the sump up to grab itso we're just pumping it out and diluting itwith the fresh water until we get all the green algae outOnce you've pressure washed the pool surfaceand removed the algae filled waterit's time to do a chlorine wash on the pool walls Before getting startedyou'll want to reinstall the main drain cover

Next, prepare the walls by wetting them down with a garden hoseWhen applying chlorine to the wallsyou want to do it from outside of the poolpouring it down the walls as evenly as possible to avoid streaking The reason for pouring from outside of the poolis to avoid tracking chlorine onto the deck and creating unwanted stains Most algae should be killed off in a matter of minutes after pouring chlorine on the walls

Continue to pour around the entire perimeter of the poolLet the chlorine sit for about 30 minutes before washing all the pool surfaces off with fresh water You can now proceed to fill the pool back up with waterWhile the pool is filling upit's a good idea to proudly start with a fresh filter

This particular equipment pad has a cartridge filterWe are going replace the cartridge If you have a sand or DE filteryou might want to change the sand or replace the DE gridsbecause chances are the inside of these filtersif you had a swamp, it's going to be pretty nasty You'd want to start with a fresh filter

[music]We're going to turn the pump onand we got the air bleed openand we're going to leave it open until water starts to spray outOnce the pool is filled up and the pump is runningyou'll want to test and adjust the chemicalsto avoid your pool from turning green againThe six main readings you'll want to check for are free chlorinetotal chlorine, pH, cyanuric acidalkalinity and calcium hardness[music]As you can seewe're done with the drain and clean

The owner says it hasn't looked this good in 10 yearsso we're pretty happy with the jobThe whole process took us four daysThe first day, we drained it we pressure washed itThe second day we came back and we did the chlorine washon the sides and the bottom

Then the last two days, it was just filling upIt's all ready to go, and looks good to swim inIf you have any questions about this particular job or anything else pool-relatedleave a comment down below or visit us at wwwinyopools

com Thanks for watching[music]