Never drain your pool
It feels logical. It's very wrong. Storm-saturated ground pushes up on an empty shell, and hydrostatic pressure can lift a concrete pool right out of the ground ("popping"). A full pool is a stable pool. Leave the water in. Always.
Before the storm
- Leave the water level alone (or lower a few inches at most if heavy surge flooding is forecast). The water weight protects the shell and the screen enclosure.
- Kill power to the equipment at the breaker: pumps, heaters, chlorinators, lights. Flooded equipment that's energized is how motors die.
- Shock the pool with extra chlorine before the storm hits. It buys you days of algae protection while everything else is chaos.
- Clear the deck. Furniture, toys, potted plants, and umbrellas become projectiles. Store them indoors. Please don't toss furniture into the pool: it scratches finishes, stains surfaces, and rusts hardware.
- Don't cover the pool. Debris shreds covers, and a torn cover in the water is a bigger cleanup than leaves. Skip it.
- Trim overhanging branches earlier in the season. Most storm debris in your pool comes from your own yard.
During the storm
- Stay away from the pool area. Nothing out there is worth the risk.
- Leave the power off until things are dry and inspected.
After the storm
- Still don't drain it, even if it looks like a pond. The ground is at its most saturated right after the storm, which is exactly when empty pools pop.
- Hand-skim the big debris with a net first. Don't run a vacuum straight into a debris field. It clogs lines and burns up pumps.
- Inspect before you re-energize. If equipment took on water, have it checked before flipping breakers back on.
- Shock again and run the filter long. Storm water is loaded with organics and the chemistry will be way off.
- Be patient. A storm-hit pool usually takes days of filtering to come back. It will come back.
- Or just text us. After every storm we run cleanup routes across Cape Coral. Weekly customers get priority, and we'll get to everyone as fast as we can.
Storm cleanup, handled. Text us a photo of the damage and we'll tell you what it needs. No charge for the advice.