Every Pool Owner's Worst Nightmare

[elsie]

Then again there's worse, thinking of Janet's experience a few years ago which this doesn't begin to touch.

I left work two hours early last Thursday because I was concerned about the darkening sky. The storms here in Alabama can be wicked and have scared me since I moved here six years ago from Minnesota where blizzards are considered benign, mostly because I work so far from home here and traffic's so hellacious, a new experience for me in my 53 years. Mostly, I worry about my 3 dogs who are all terrified of bad storms (even though they have the luxury of being on the bed or couch whenever I'm away). By the time I parked my car in the garage and walked through the service door, it was barely sprinkling and I thought "oh false alarm, I should've stayed at work." But then my hair stood on end. One of my two market umbrellas on the deck was flung 20 feet downhill by a tremendous wind and landed on my pump and tore up all the above-ground pvc pipes (except for the waste pipe). Tree limbs, a heavy flower pot and a two-pronged sharp instrument I use to pry the skimmer cover off when high heat makes it expand and stick was ripped away from the nail it hangs on all landed in the pool.

In the hour after the high winds (my retired neighbor pinned down the time exactly), the water level already had dropped to right below the skimmer, of course, with the pvc's all broken, and as the days went on, the water's now dropped to below the return jets, and still dropping. Because my main drain is closed because apparently the prior owner's had pool lights there and there was a leakage problem (they had the lights removed and closed the drain), it's a closed system, so I know for sure I have a liner tear.

I'm still waiting on the adjuster to call me, somewhat on pins and needles, hoping he will approve liner replacement; otherwise I'll have to just absorb it, which is not entirely a bad thing because the liner's very old anyway and I was expecting to do this next year. Makes no sense to me to patch at this point. The only reason I wonder if insurance will replace it is because it's already an old liner at the end of its useful life (although one can never know for certain when that is, who knows, maybe it would've gone on for a number of years yet). But then again, it's storm damage, and age shouldn't matter? It would be akin to having an old roof and getting hail damage: insurance would still pay for its replacement...

Liner outfit coming tonight to give me another bid. I got one last Saturday -- only $145 for all the pvc repair and replacing the ball valve (water handle) (no chlorinator because I don't use one; I should have one put in for resale but when I turned my original one off when I went to BBB method it made an obnoxious rattle sound), but they want $3,000 for a new 16x32 in ground liner; another I spoke with on the phone wants the same. One place I called, but the guy doesn't do in ground liners, told me the going rate should be around $2200, and said that there's lots of folks out there ripping people off and charging $3,000, but I suspect they're all charging $3,000 -- time will tell. Some of the people I've spoken to on the phone can't even tell me the mil of the liner they want to sell me, how poor is that??!!! But, it seems the industry standard *might* be 20 mil.

1. Should I have whoever replaces the liner see what's what with that main drain? Might I get a lot more water circulation with it open? Would any debris that gets sucked into it then land in the sand filter or the secondary trap at the pump? And, what about safety, that concerns me after hearing stories of children being eviscerated at commercial pools by the main drain. That said, I wonder where the leakage problem was? If it was in an underground lateral, I wouldn't want that main drain reopened. But would that main drain lateral be right now open to the other laterals anyway, which would tell us the leakage problem is definitely not in the main drain lateral but rather right at that main drain site? I don't know how everything connects underground. I guess the liner people would/should know?

2. Chems. Once the liner's installed and I've got the hose filling it up (20,000 gallons so will take a few days), at what point do I start to add CYA and bleach? Just "as it goes"? Or something like half full, start adding them? And one at a time or simultaneously, figuring, of course, for the appropriate gallonage the pool's at? Of course chlorine can't be retained without CYA, and CYA without chlorine will give me a green pool, so I'm hoping I can add them simultaneously.

3. With the new liner I think I will start adding my bleach in the skimmer instead of directly into the pool. Are there any problems/issues with doing it this way at all?

This will be the first time I'll have to fuss with other values. My old pool water was so easy to maintain with just bleach and muriatic acid every week or two. Well, I guess the only other thing really is TA, right? Or extremely low pH, which is something I've never had. I guess I'd better order some Taylor TA reagents while I think about it.

4. The pump motor was running before I turned it off. Running rather dry, of course. Would running dry for an hour or so cause damage that's not apparent now? One pool service who came to bid said probably not, probably it would be okay as long as it gets prime when everything's fixed. But if I do put in for a claim (only if ins. will pay for new liner), might I want to argue that the motor should be replaced because of unseen damage, or is that pushing it? Will it probably be just fine and not lose a good portion of its life?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!