Too much rain, need to drain

[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 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.