How can I drian and refill my pool with out shrinking my liner?
Question:We decided to open our pool today and to our surprise it was such a dark green color it almost looked black. You can't see more than 3 inches below the surface. It also doesn't help that my husband didn't get all the water and leaves off the cover and ended up spilling some into the pool... which didn't make a difference because the water was so gross to begin with. It smells terrible and I can't even imagine how long it would take to fix. I've never seen a pool so terrible in my life. It seriously looks like a swamp.
So instead of spending a ton of money and time on the chemicals. We would rather drain and refill it to start fresh. I know the liner will need to be scrubbed very well. The only problem is I'm scared to completely drain it. Everything I 've found online says not to completely drain your pool because the liner will shrink. So does anyone have any advice or tips on how to tackle draining and refilling the pool?
Answers:
DO NOT drain the pool or you risk having to replace the liner. If you do drain any of the water off, leave at least 8" of water in the bottom to keep the liner stretched.
Feel free to email me at robandliz1992@yahoo.com and I can help you get the water cleared up and back to normal. It will be cheaper than refilling the pool in the long run.
But please, don't drain the pool completely.
Put a hose in the pool and allow it to over flow. This will displace the olde water diluting it with new fresh water. Then plan to shock it several time as needed as well as many filter cleanings.
I think your best bet is to drain most of the water, but not all of it. You need to leave the few inches at the bottom, but they shouldn't be too hard. Once you are down to the last few inches, you may be surprised that it isn't as dirty as you thought. Get in there with a skimmer and get all of the junk out. Then add your cleaning chemicals, and mix it up by hand (but not with your hand :-), use a brush or something) . Your local fire department may do pool filing, at least they did in my area. The few inches at the bottom don't have to be sparkling, just okay. When mixed with the fresh water, your filter should take care of anything that is left.
Good luck!
Draining completely is not a good idea. One thing I have suggested in the past is to drain the pool so there is still a few inches of water in the shallow end (if it's an inground), do your scrubbing at this point, then start to refill the pool in the shallow end while continuing to drain it from the deep end. True, it will take forever to fill this way, but you can continue to get the swamp water out while putting new water in... eventually, you'll get to a point where you can stop draining and just clean what's left.
If it's an above-ground, just leave at least 4-6 inches of water in the bottom. That should be enough to keep the weight on the liner.
Start draining in the afternoon, so that the sun will be down before it empties out. Yes, you can empty it out. Do your cleaning and patch any holes while it is empty. Make sure you refill it before the sun comes up in the morning. I've done this many times and never experienced shrinkage.
I hope this helps!
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