DRAINING A SWIMMING POOL WATER MAY BE A BAD IDEA

If you live in the Southwestern United States and own a swimming pool, one of the biggest issues you will deal with is calcium hardness. This issue isn’t something that most people are aware of, but anytime you have a large body of water and are subjected to evaporation, calcium levels rise. This occurs because as water evaporates, the hardness minerals remain in solution and increase over time with the addition of new water. As hardness levels rise, it is necessary to change out the water in your swimming pool. There are major risks and dangers anytime you plan on draining a swimming pool, which includes vinyl liner and fiberglass pools. Some of those risks of draining swimming pool water are summarized below:

• In ground vinyl liner swimming pools are the most dangerous to drain as they do not have any physical structure to hold back the weight of the dirt when the pool is drained. When the pool is drained, it can cause the walls to collapse, or ground water can cause the liner to float; neither of which are good for swimming pools!
• Fiberglass pools are often inserted into an excavated area and then backfilled with dirt.  Since the water weight is far greater than the weight of the fiberglass shell, removing the water weight in a fiberglass pool is extremely dangerous as it applies to these types of pools coming out of the ground.
• In ground concrete pools are structurally built to withstand the weight of the water pushing outward on the shell, and that water weight helps keep the shell in the ground. However, if the ground water is high enough, it can actually push the entire pool out of the ground.  Once a pool has popped out of the ground it will not go back down!
• In ground concrete swimming pool finishes (plaster) can also crack when the temperature is above 70-75 degrees and the surface of the swimming pool doesn’t remain wet.  Swimming pool plaster has been wet since the day it was installed (it cures under water) and contracts when the water is taken away.  Once this finish rehydrates, it expands and the risk of delamination occurs.

There is always going to be a risk when you drain swimming pools. In the Southwestern United States, where drought conditions are on the rise, the simple and easy answer is not to drain your pool but recycle it instead.

At Pure Water Industries, we invented the “Puripool Process”, which is an alternative to draining swimming pool water that utilizes mobile Reverse Osmosis (RO) Filtration to lower calcium hardness, total dissolved solids (TDS), and other issues without draining the pool. By using this technology, the water level in the swimming pool never changes, taking the risk out of draining a pool and providing you with a much better product than a typical drain and refill.

If you’re interested in learning more about the “Puripool Process”, Contact Us or a Service Provider in your area today!