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Regular emptying of a pool


osie
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Hi All

I was wondering the pro's and con's of emptying a pool every few years.. I figured that if you are going to winterise (empty half of it), then why not get rid of the other half (great idea if you are married ;-) ) in the spring.  The con's would be the price of the water... The pro's would be removing all that Cyn acid and generally having some nice clean water which may need less products to balance.

This is based on zero expert knowledge just logic...

Thanks

osie

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There is a buildup over time of various chemicals in the pool that do not get fully oxidized by chlorine, but for residential pools which are typically low bather-load the rate of this increase is very slow.  So in practice, the buildup that occurs more rapidly is that of salt (sodium chloride) or as you point out if you are using Trichlor pucks/tabs, Cyanuric Acid (CYA) in addition to salt.

However, you shouldn't need to do a complete drain because regular backwashing along with annual rain overflow or partial water draining for winterizing should be sufficient to dilute the water over time and keep the level of organics and salt in check.  In my own pool, I use winter rains for overflow/dilution so effectively get around a 50% dilution annually.  I use the winter rains to do this since water is very expensive where I live and I don't get much dilution elsewhere since I have an oversized cartridge filter (so not backwashing) that only needs cleaning once a year.

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Following on from Chem Geeks post. As we have said quite often don't keep using multi action gallets (containing cyanuric acid) and instead use bleach (javel) from a brico shed and acid to adjust your PH again from a brico.

There is really no need to empty 50% just below the skimmer is usually sufficient. Regarding fresh (tap water) have you actually checked the hardness and total alkalinity? you may find as in my area the hardness is high and so is the total alkalinity at 220-240ppm so you will end up using a lot of PH- (Acid) to bring the levels down to around 90ppm and then adjusting the PH without adding to the TA. Therefore any cost saving has gone.

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TP, if you have a liner pool I think that I am correct in thinking that it is not a good idea to empty the pool? Because if you do the liner is likely to crease and come away from the walls of the pool and be in need of expert assistance to be persuaded to go back to being the nice flat liner that it was when you decided to drain it?

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Quite true Jonzjob, not a good idea to completely empty liner pools for too long, anything that may fall in could also puncture the liner without the water to put the brakes on. More of concern is that a lot of liner pools are made of sheet steel/ali/plastic and are not structurally sound enough to withstand any ground movement whilst empty, in short they get crushed. The main reason I would only build structural pools that can be emptied, I would walk away from any customer who wanted otherwise. Obviously I am talking in the ground pools not on top.
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Thanks for all the valid comments...

I did empty the pool a few years back to do a bit of a bodge job on a tiny little hole in the liner...

I am thinking of doing the same again.. (to fix the bodge job) and also I now have some leaves stuck in the bond-de-fond.. which I wont be swimming in to fix this year.  I also think the ph here seems to be okay as I dont tend to use much ph-.

The probably conclusion is that I will do a quick empty and refill in March, and get someone in-the-know to do the liner fix and I can get rid of the leaves too.

osie

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