Safe to empty pool?

[mkelley]

Okay, one more question and I'll stop <g>.

Based on a wide variety of things I think I need to empty out a substantial amount of water from my (13,000 gallons) gunnite diamondbrite finish inground pool. Living in Florida I've never had to do this (only drain a little rainwater from time to time) and I just want to make sure I'm not going to hurt anything.

If I connect the hose to the skimmer and put it into the pool (to keep the pump from running dry or at least getting lots of air after the pool goes below skimmer level) is there anything else I need to be aware of? I don't intend to leave the pool low for long -- going to immediately add water as soon as I get it down about halfway -- but I also don't want to make a mistake here.

The ground is pretty wet (we've had lots of rain the last few weeks) if that makes any difference (naturally the pool is surrounded by a concrete lanai). We have a very porous ground surface here in Florida -- water goes through it live a sieve.

Or am I worrying about nothing?

[Poconos]

A definite maybe to the questions. All depends on the ground water level. If you drain water and the water level outside the pool is high then there is a lifting force on the pool shell as it tries to float. Given enough of lift it can pop out of the ground. My suggestion would be to somehow dig a test hole, with something like a post hole digger, and see where the ground water level stabilizes. Then don't drain below that, or at least not much below. The calculation for the lifting force on the shell given the difference in water levels and the surface area of the pool is pretty simple. The big unknowns are the weight of the shell and the force needed to pop it out.
Al