Too much rain, need to drain

[Macrosill]

Is there a benefit or detriment in draining excess water from rain by backwashing vs pump to waste? Is it possible to backwash too much?

This is one of those times when I thought the grass was greener on the other side. For the past 3 years I had 3 leaky liners and was complaining. I replaced and upgraded everything except the wall ans uprights. It is water tight. Now I wish I had that "self draining" liner.;)

Brian

[matt4x4]

I rarely get rid of the excess water, the hot days that follow the rain usually do this for me! Besides, in the country we hang on to every drop since wells don't like to generate mass volumes of water fast.
But, if I do have to lower the level - like closing time, I backwash it all out, this way, I'm pretty much guaranteed that my filter medium is clean.

[cleancloths]

Yes, but when you have too much water the skimmers stop working. I just pump to waste, but there is no reason you could not do it through backwash.

[markphin]

except that when you backwash with a DE filter you are flushing out your DE, possibly unnecesarily. When lowering pool levels, do through waste, and backwash only when necessary.

Personally, unless the water level is up to the coping, I let heat and wind lower it for me. Just can't beat free water. Skimmers still work, just not as effectively.

[cleancloths]

except that when you backwash with a DE filter you are flushing out your DE, possibly unnecesarily. When lowering pool levels, do through waste, and backwash only when necessary.

Personally, unless the water level is up to the coping, I let heat and wind lower it for me. Just can't beat free water. Skimmers still work, just not as effectively.


I guess it depends what type of skimmer you have. Mine have a basket with an inner ring that floats up and down. Normally they inner ring is floating and stuff goes in it and gets trapped in the basket. When the water gets too high the inner ring reaches its travel limit and stuff stops getting trapped as it just floats over the top of the ring.

[chrisexv6]

I always thought a *skimmer* was meant to *skim* the surface of the water? If the surface of the water is over the skimmer, its not really skimming anything anymore :)

Those of us with vinyl liners need to keep track of the water level. Dont need it getting up to the coping and floating the liner out of place!

-Chris

[prh129]

My skimmer opening has marks for the recommended min and max water levels. We had so much rain in the northeast this spring that on several occasions I have had water overflowing out of the skimmer onto the ground after the rain. Over the last three months I have drained water out on at least 4 (maybe 5) different occasions because the water level was up to the top of the skimmer so it seems like nothing (or very little) will get pulled into the skimmer unless the water level is lowered a bit. I usually drained to about 1" below the max level. It's too bad I can't pump that off into some kind of reserve tank to use later on (although it would probably be more work to maintain the reserve water than it was worth).

Peter

[Macrosill]

The water level is overflowing the skimmer and it is not cleaning the surface since the water is over the skimmer opening. I too an in the north east, Long Island, NY to be exact. More rain coming tonight. Anyway thanks for all the replies, we kind of got off topic slightly but I will just vac to waste to lower the water level. This way I can kill 2 birds with one stone.

Thanks,
Brian

[prh129]

Sorry, I have a cartridge filter so I couldn't help with your original question :rolleyes: I used my vacuum hose and put the brush end in front of the return jet to get a siphon going to drain water out.

Peter

[Donna's Poolboy]

Don't you lose a little bit of sand each time you backwash? (If you have a sand filter, obviously). If your filter doesn't need backwashing, I'd drain it off using the waste setting.