A Drain on My Resources

I'm coming to realize now after a few months time with my very own in ground pool that pools are a lot like boats. They cost a lot of money, you rarely use them, and you spend way more time on upkeep than you do in the damn thing. At least that's been my experience, and so I've been looking forward to finishing off the closing of this pool. Then I don't have to so much as look at it until spring.

The winterizing kit I got for the pool said that after the pool water was within range on all its normal chemicals, that this non-chlorinated pool shock should be added. The packaging says it's 45% potassium monopersulfate. I'll have to take their word for it that this is the right stuff since I'm new to the whole pool thing. This is done before the pool is drained so that the filter and its jets can be used to mix it in to the water for an hour.

After an hour, these two chemicals are added. They're labeled Winterizer and Winter Stain Away. Same deal as above, let mix for another hour.

Since my pool is on a slope, I'm still able to use a siphon hose to drain the water. I zip tied this brick to one end of the hose.

Primed it with one of the filter jets.

Then let it drain down the hill overnight.

Here's where the level ended up at by the morning. Just about perfect.

First thing I did was back flush the filter by drawing water from the drains since the skimmers were dry now. Then I popped out this drain plug.

This little Dr. Seuss-looking contraption here came into play next. It's my final prototype for a pool skimmer blower-outer, or whatever one would call such a thing. Since water expands when it freezes it will burst the pipes when it does if there's any left in the pipes, so I made this using my electric leaf blower, a vacuum cleaner extension pipe and a pool vacuum skimmer attachment. I was kind of surprised that the vacuum cleaner and the pool vacuum stuff seemed to be compatible, but then I realized that they're both vacuums, and that they probably use the same standard sizes.

Here's a closer look. The leaf blower has this oval shaped end, so I needed to use duct tape to seal the joint. The other end just slid into the skimmer vacuum attachment.

This is the manifold for the skimmers and the drains at the bottom of the pool. First I did this deep end one by opening this valve and blowing through. The previous owner hard piped all this stuff into place with no unions, so I couldn't remove them without cutting.

Instead I just removed the top of the filter pump basket and removed the bottom drain to blow the lines into. This worked pretty well. It also allowed any water in the pipe up to the filter manifold to drain out of the line.

After blowing out both skimmers in this way, I closed off the valve at the top of the filter (which I found leaks through even when closed, go figure) and reinstalled the top and the plug on the pump basket. I didn't need a perfect seal anyway, I just needed enough back pressure to push some water. With the help of my wife I blew through the shallow skimmer line seen above (other skimmer valve closed) and with the pressure built up, she opened the valve on the end that goes to the drain, which pushed the water in the line down into the ground some. I wasn't able to achieve enough pressure to overcome the weight of the water column on top of the drain and blow it all the way through, but I didn't need to. The idea was to just get any of the water that was up out of the ground pushed down in where it's not likely to freeze.

After that I went back through and blew through each of the skimmer lines a couple more times just to get the last little bit of water out of there. Some came out the other end, so it's a good thing I went OCD on it.

Here's another little serendipitous compatibility I found. This under sink drain pipe elbow is just the right size to clamp down on my shop vac hose end. The other end has the same size and pitch of thread as the water jet fitting I'm holding in my hand there. I couldn't believe my good luck on that one. Since I couldn't really get the blower down onto these fittings without electrocuting myself by dropping it into the water, I used my shop vac to suck these return lines dry. It took quite a while of opening and closing circuits and it actually filled the vacuum a few times.

This is how I selectively closed off the other return circuits. I'm not usually a duct-tape kind of DIYer, but it sure came in handy on this job.

I'm not sure what this port is for on the outlet of the filter, but I was able to use it to create suction all the way back to the filter manifold and the other direction as well. This made sure none of the lines had any water left in them.

The last thing I did for the lines was this cleaner pump line. Since this pump is seized up and useless anyway, I just cut these ones off so I can maybe try to take a stab at repairing it this winter. There must have been an obstruction here because the vacuum wasn't getting all the water out, just in little fits and starts. I left it on that fitting out at the pool and went over to the pump and I couldn't hear any air rushing. A little shot from my air compressor got it going and after a few minutes with the shop vac, this line was clear too.

So that was it for clearing out the lines. It took like half a day, which is way longer than I had hoped. If I hadn't had to design a system from scratch to blow out and vacuum the lines, I probably could have done this in a little over an hour.

One of the last steps here before I put the pool cover on was to seal the tops of the skimmers with some of that handy duct tape. It doesn't do much good blowing out the lines if it can rain back down in there, and we get a lot of rain here. Also, the cover is mesh so it wouldn't stop any water from getting in there during rains.

Next step was to prep this floater for the winterizing tablets. For whatever reason they didn't drill these holes from the factory and so I had to do the last part of the manufacturing process. Then into the water it went with the narrow end down, the cover went on and voila, pool closed! I am so excited to not have to touch this thing until spring! Until next time, Steem On!

#posh