Are you tired of the water in your pool staying dirty and murky even though you’re doing all you can to maintain it?
You may have done all the cleaning and regularly checked the pH balance level but it’s still not clear. This can be very frustrating at times especially if you’re planning to host a pool party. Let us help you out!
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In this article, we’ll tell you exactly how to drain Bestway and Intex pools in a few simple steps! Stick around.
How to Drain a Bestway or Intex Pool: Step-by-Step Guide
Here are the steps you need to follow in order to drain your Bestway or Intex pool properly:
Step 1: Clean Your Pool
First, remove all accessories from your pool, like floaties or inflatable balls. Then, clear away any debris in the pool using your skimmer net. This will help prevent clogging in the draining process.
Cleaning your pool is essential before you start.
It is also important that the pool is standing level. Check this with a leveling tool before you start to drain it.
Step 2: Figure Out Where All the Water Will Go
It’s important to plan where you’ll drain the pool water. You can usually use a cleanout, which is a pipe that drains water from your home’s plumbing system, but you’ll need to look up your county’s regulations regarding pool water disposal. You also want to make sure that you don’t clog up your main drain as pools can contain mud and other dirt. It is best to remove this (with a net) before you drain it in your drains.
Be careful if you’re going to drain your Bestway or Intex pool on your property, as the water may damage your lawn or garden.
Before draining your pool, test the pH and chlorine levels to make sure you are not draining water that has either very low or high pH chlorine levels.
Step 3: Find the Drain Valve
Once you’ve planned where the water will go, make sure you disconnect your water pump and turn both plunger valves clockwise to close them.
In this step, you will need a long garden hose and a drain connector. Your pool’s drain valve is usually located at the lowest point of the pool so that surface slightly slants toward it.
If you look closely at your pool’s drain valve, you’ll find it has a cap on it from both sides. Use the drain connector between your garden hose and the drain valve and push it hard inside the valve so the cap inside the pool opens up and water starts to flow. Make sure to tighten the connector so that water won’t leak out of it.
If you don’t have a drain valve on your pool, you can purchase a sump pump to move water through its hose and into your drainage system. Cheap pumps tend to overheat and burn out quickly, so it’s best to spend more for one that will last longer.
Step 4: Siphon the Remaining Water: pump or garden hose
Unfortunately, once the water level is below the drain outlet, you’ll find there’s still some water on the pool floor that can’t simply flow out from the hose.
First, you’ll need to take off the drain connector from both the garden hose and the pool and put the hose directly into the pool itself.
You can insert the hose into the pool from above its edges or from the drain valve itself. The latter will help keep the hose against the pool floor, making it easier for you to handle and drain any water that remains in the pool.
The tricky part of the siphon method is that the hose must be filled with water end to end at all times. Some people use their mouths to suck water from one end of the pool to the other side, but this can cause you to accidentally swallow some.
An easier technique is to connect the outer end of your hose to your outdoor faucet. Once connected, open the water for a few seconds.
Filling your pool with water again may seem counterintuitive, but it’s only for a few seconds to ensure both ends of the hose are filled with water.
Once both ends are filled, stop the faucet and remove the hose to let the water in the pool drain properly. One important rule is to make sure the hose end outside the pool is lower in level than the one inside the pool. A few hours later you’ll notice all the water has drained and what is left dries out with the sun.
How to Drain the Pool With Garden Hose
Draining a pool with a garden hose is the most common, equipment-free method. But it’s also the slowest.
You’ll need to create a siphon to empty any water container with a hose. Without getting too scientific, a siphon is a tube where water flows continuously from one end to another.
You’ll have to rely on simple physics to create a siphon in your pool. Follow these steps to know how:
Fill Your Hose With Water
The first step you need to do is fill the hose with water. To do that, simply submerge the hose in the water. Then, hold both ends and direct them upward until the bubbles stop entirely.
The absence of bubbles means no more air inside the hose.
Remove One End of the Hose
The trick is to move a part of your hose out of the water without breaking the water flow. To do that, you’ll need to hold one end of the hose and cover it securely with your hand.
Remove that end from the pool and place it on the ground.
Start Draining
Once you stop covering the end of your hose with your hand, the water should start flowing through.
Keep in mind that this end of the hose should be on a lower level than the water of your above-ground pool. If you don’t do that, there will be no water flow.
Additionally, the submerged end of the hose should remain under the water for the whole duration. Again, failing to do that will stop the water flow.
Draining Pool With Garden Hose: Tips and Tricks
Remember that draining the above-ground pool with a hose is a slow process that can take up to days for larger pools.
Additionally, the draining process gets slower with time as your water level lowers. Therefore, if your water level is already too low for a siphon to be created, you should create one yourself.
Simply connect one end of the hose to a water tap and place the other end of the hose under the pool’s water level.
Turn on your water tap to fill the hose with water. Ensure that the submerged end of the hose is weighted or held by someone else to avoid displacing it with the water pressure of the tap.
Once the hose is full of water, detach the hose from the tap without closing it to prevent breaking the water flow. The water direction will then reverse, coming out of the hose end that was connected to the tap.
At one point, the water level will be too low for the flow to continue. When that happens, you’ll need a reliable shop vacuum to drain the last couple of inches of water.
How to Drain Pool With Sump Pump
The hose method is easy and convenient, but it can be unbearably slow. If you need to drain your above-ground pool faster, you should use a sump pump. You’ll still need that hose, though.
You should begin by attaching the hose to your sump pump. Follow that by locating and opening the house’s clean-out port.
The clean-out port is an easily accessible part of the sanitary drainage pipes. You should open that and place the other end of the hose there.
Remember that you should thoroughly clean the hose after this, as you’d be placing it where all of the house’s water draining is going, including the bathroom drainage.
Place your pump in the above-ground pool without connecting it to any electricity. Once the pump is stable on the pool’s floor and your hands are dry, connect the sump pump to an electrical outlet.
Turn on the pump and periodically monitor the water levels as they reduce. This process will take around eight hours to finish.
The pump will no longer be useful once the water levels get too low. You’ll have to rely on the shop vacuum to get rid of the remaining water.
How Often Should You Drain Your Bestway or Intex Pool
You may need to drain your pool and refill it with fresh water due to several reasons. Maybe you’ve exhausted the treatment chemicals in the pool, there are bugs in the water or layers of dead skin, or any number of other issues.
All of this adds up to a pool that’s hard to treat with chemicals. So, unless you take down your pool every winter, you’ll only have to drain it every couple of years.
To protect your pool’s surface from strong sunlight, you’ll also want to do this during mild weather. Further, to ensure that your pool is safe and enjoyable, don’t forget to balance the chemicals in your water when you refill it.
How to Keep Your Bestway and Intex or Bestway Pool Clean?
To keep your pool in tip-top condition, you’ll need to maintain a simple cleaning routine. A cleaning schedule with the right tools will help remove leaves or sand that could clog your filtration system or throw off your water chemicals.
Use your skimmer net every other day to prevent any debris from falling to the bottom of your pool and leaving stains. A small hack to avoid a lot of skimming is that you can use a pool cover at night to protect it.
A pool vacuum is another tool that can help you keep your pool pristine. As you move the vacuum along the bottom of your pool, it sucks up all fallen leaves and dirt into a filter bag inside the vacuum. This leaves your pool free of any debris and looking sparkling clean.
During the busy summer season, it’s best to brush your pool with a nylon brush quite regularly. This will help get any algae out of corners and into the water filtration system. Make sure the brush is made of nylon so that it doesn’t scratch or tear your pool liner.
Above-ground pools are often easier to drain than inground pools.
When Should You Drain Your Intex or Bestway Pool?
Here are the scenarios when you should drain your above-ground pool
Cyanuric Acid Levels Are Too High
We use various chemicals like chlorine to keep our poor water clean. But unfortunately, in long-term usage, these chemicals lead to the formation of cyanuric acid.
The acid itself isn’t known to have harmful effects, but it will degrade your pool’s liner. That’s why you need to occasionally refresh your pool water even if you don’t feel that something is wrong.
Imbalanced Water Chemistry
Regardless of how careful you are when maintaining your pool’s chemicals, sometimes your water is just beyond saving and needs replacement.
When this happens, you’ll need to drain the old water and refill the pool with fresher water.
You Need to Make Structural Repair
Above-ground pools will need fixing and maintenance over time.
The most common required maintenance is replacing the liner or repairing the frame’s base. Unfortunately, you can’t do that with water in the pool.
Conclusion
So, how to drain above ground pool? Use a hose. It’s as simple as that. If the hose method is too slow for you, you may consider using a sump pump….and a hose!
Just make sure to keep the water flowing without forgetting to check on the drainage process every once in a while.
An inground pool requires another approach than an above-ground pool.
Hopefully, reading this guide on how to drain Bestway and Intex pools has been helpful. It’s not a particularly complicated process, but there are a few key things you should keep in mind while you work. Now your pool should be ready for draining again whenever the need arises.
