Draining and refilling the pool?

[Pool novice]

Just bought a house with a pool. There's little information available on the pool. at present I have a weekly service managing the pool, but eventually I would like to go solo.
My first question is do I need to change the water in the pool? How often should it be changed.
The sand in the filter was changed in 2005.
What's the criteria for changing both?
I'm looking forward to reading more posts, I'm glad that I found this site. thank you
pool novice

[Watermom]

Nope! You don't need to change your water or sand. Water and sand don't 'wear out.' If you have used Baquacil and then switch to chlorine you would need to change the sand after the conversion but that is one of the few situations where you would need to. Sometimes you need to top it off if the sand level gets low but even that isn't too often.

Do you have a good test kit? If not, that would be the first item of business to order a Taylor K-2006 or 2006C from the link in my signature below. While you still have the pool service, have them make a list of every product they have used in your pool. (If possible, don't just get product names but also ingredients.) That info will be helpful if you end up with a problem down the road. Sometimes we can figure out what is going on when we see what has been used in the past and pool services are notorious for adding unnecessary products.

Read a lot of posts here on the forum, especially the stickied threads at the top of each sub-forum. (Until your registration is completed, you will need to log out first to be able to do so.) Also, read on our sister website www.poolsolutions.com. Lots of good information there as well.

Let us know how we can help you and welcome to the Pool Forum!

[PoolDoc]

membership upgraded.