Help. Large glass table flew into inground 36'by18' pool

Big storm today took our seat 8 glass table with umbrella into pool and millions of little shards of glass in shallow end, heading toward deep end. (9'deep)

I got the table out with help still with sharp chards of glass but don't know how to get the rest out. Do not want to drain pool. Do not want to risk damaging vinyl. So far, I swam and took a few pieces out (floating of course but dunking under water and getting some stuck in my thumb not an option)

Please help. I turned off the pump so glass would not move to deep end.

I've got no magic wands for you - I don't know how you get glass out of a vinyl pool without risk of cutting the liner. Glass in a pool is pretty much a disaster. As you can see on the PoolForum blog, I encountered this problem at a local 200,000 gallon country club pool, just a few weeks ago . . . and we drained the pool.

What I would do, it it were my pool, is use my SCUBA gear, and probably work with a bare vac-hose hooked up to the skimmer. Of course, then you may get glass in your pump and that's a problem too.

Here's another option - you could use a snorkel and a battery powered vac, like the ones in this thread:
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?18375
The benefit of using a battery vac is first that it doesn't risk your pool pump, and second that you may be able to be more gentle, than you would with a standard vac on the end of a pole.

I talked to a customer service rep at Water Tech, and they indicated the CG model is the one most likely to work well for you, but that you'd want to get some extra bags.

Sorry. Others may have another idea.

The only other thing I can say is that I've added "glass patio tables" to the list for the "Pool Don't Do's" page I'm working on!

I think this is the third incident, counting the one Ben had to deal with, that we've heard of this year on the forum of broken glass in a pool.

The only other suggestion I have is that after you have removed all you can see is to shine a flashlight into the water at night to make it easier to see any pieces you might have missed. I'm not sure that it will work, but I think it would.

Good luck. What a pain to deal with. :(

While I was fortunate glass didn't get into the pool, a few years ago we had a big storm that smashed my glass top patio table into a zillion pieces that was sitting on a nearby brick patio. I spent over 4 hours vacuuming and revacuuming the brick patio with a shop vac to get rid of the glass. I swore after that I would never own a glass top patio table again (the new table has nice heavy tiles).

I wish I had an easy solution for you, but I was also thinking a battery powered device like Ben mentioned may work.

Let us know what you do and how it goes.

Since glass and sand are basically the same sort of thing, and about the same hardness, I vote for the bare vac. line method. I would make a filter sock out of screen to catch as much of the glass as possible after first getting the big pieces out by hand.

Tempered glass usually breaks into pieces the size of rock salt, so hopefully you can get it out without too much fuss. Take your time and grid out the area of the pool and do 1 grid at a time.

I think it might be harder to get clean with it drained than going about it full.