Filling pool with Well water without running well dry

[SissyH]

Hi,

our pool will be installed this week (16x32) and it will hold a lot of water.
We are on a Well and I'm just wondering if it'll hurt the wellpump and hoping
that our well will not run dry.
Anybody else filles a big pool like this from the Well. We do have a pond but I don't really want that pondwater in my pool !?!?!?!?!

thanks Sissy :confused:

[Bullbythehorns]

Sissy,

I filled mine out of the well over the course of a week. I would put the hose in and turn the hydrant partially on. If you turn it on full bore then your well will cycle more often and may not allow adequate rest time for your pump. Another option might be to see if your local fire department fills swimming pools.

[shrike]

your pool builder should be able to recommend a pool filling company.

[Poconos]

Sissy,
Welcome to the forum.

First some questions:
Vinyl liner?
Filter type?
Do you have access to another pool pump or can you temporarily move the one you have? Or even rent something for a day or two?

You may not have the luxury of being able to wait days to fill a new pool. First, nothing wrong with pond water if it doesn't resemble a swamp. You're going to shock the heck out of the water anyhow. I have a stream that I use for fill whenever necessary. You could always test the pond water beforehand for metals, bacteria etc.
If you go the pond route, have a sand filter, and an extra pump (or move the real one temporarily), you can pump from the pond into the waste port of the filter, set the valve to BACKWASH, and the filtered water will come out the skimmer. The water will be flowing in the right direction for filtering. 1.25" PVC pipe is cheap so you could even jury rig a temporary line from the pond to the pool without permanently bonding the joints. Just pound the joints together with a short 2x4 and they won't leak.

On the well pump...they don't need a rest and the easiest mode of operation is to let it run continuously. Starting and stopping puts a torque on the pipe and additional use of the starting circuit. Does it make a difference??? Who knows. When I initially filled my 22K gal in 1997, before I figured out the stream, I had 3 hoses from the pump so it wouldn't cycle. Pump sucked a lot of silt and mud but over the Winter it settled. Never dried up.
Al

Edit: If you're really ambitious you can do like I did and bury the pipe. My stream is 140' from the pool and I use it to either fill or discharge. I use either an old Jacuzzi pump for bulk fills, like the leak last year, or a tiny Flotec submersible for slow fills. Bury a couple electrical lines too.

[hsdancer]

We filled our from rain wather and our well, but when we were using the well, we only filed at most six to eight inches at a time. We weren't worried about running it dry but were concerned about blowing the pump, so we let it cool between fillings. Jo

[SissyH]

Hi,

thank you so much for the response.

Yes it is a Vinyl liner
Filter type...........hmmm I have to check why??? :confused:

The Pond is spring fed approx 4 acres, no swamp,with lots of fish and turtles.
If we could use the pond water as well that would be great!!!!:)

thanks Sissy

[MarkC]

I toasted a well pump filling my 2500 gallon seasonal pool one year. It failed a week after I filled the pool. Coincidence? I do think the cycling was what killed it.

[duraleigh]

At what rate will your well replenish itself?

My 350' deep well produces 1.5 gpm......filling a pool is out of the question.

I filled from the pond using my existing sand filter (similar setup to what Poconos is describing) and had the water crystal clear in five days.

Search this forum for well water problems.....you'll find a ton of them. I'd sure price trucking it in first, pond water as my second choice, and well water dead last.

[Poconos]

Sissy,
The reason I asked about the filter is if you have a lot of crud to filter from the pond, a sand filter is much easier to clean if you have to do it often during the fill. Sounds like you have a nice pond so use it.
Jo,
As long as the pump is submerged it should get adequate cooling so it could run continuously. When I filled my 22K gal pool in 97 it was an original pump maybe 22 years old. Ran continuously for almost a day as I vaguely recall. Still working fine almost 9 years later. Maybe I shouldn't brag.
Al

[ChuckD]

We're on a well, miles from nowhere. The first year I tried using the well to add water. Dropped one end of my Martha Stewart (KMart) garden hose in and turned the faucet full on. 40 minutes later my wife's hollering about no water in the house. 30 minutes later letting the well recharge, and everything's back to normal.

What I've found is I can attach the sprayer and lock it full on and then the water will flow for hours if needed. I've let it run all night when I had to. The sprayer locked open just makes a convenient predictable restriction that won't tap the well out. In my 17x33 I get one inch every two and a half hours. That's a pool that's nearly full to begin with.

But the big lesson I learned was about the foul reaction between iron-rich well water and chlorine. It only takes a couple inches of water and a shocking dose of Cl to reward you with a brownish green pond. Back a couple months ago there was a thread with some great pictures of this. My solution was to put the sprayer into the skimmer so the water's immediately filtered thru my DE filter. Apparently the DE effectively filters out the iron sediment.

I'm not saying you should do this too. I've no idea if your pump will be up to the task. Ours is 20 years old, tho, and hasn't suffered any damage.

The last thing I'd advise is to call your local fire department, or next best, a local water service to bring the bulk of it in. I had to do this once and 4000 gallons set me back $175. But it was over and done with in a half hour.

HTH
Chuck

[orionman1]

Sissy,

We filled our 30,000 gallon pool from our well with no probelms. How old is the house/well? The reason I ask, is if the well is fairly new it should have no problem filling the pool with the hose(s) running full bore. In our area when a new well is put in, it (and the entire plumbing system of the house) is required to be sanitized. To do this, the well company puts chlorine into the well head, turns the pump on and distributes the heavily chlorinated water through the entire house. After 24 hours all that chlorinated water has to purged from the system, so the health dept. can test the water. To pruge the system, they turn on Every faucet in the house as well as Every hose bib simultaneously. The water then runs for 24 to 48 hours straight. I firgure if you had 2 hoses, each putting out 5 gmp, giving you a total of 10 gpm, it should take about 32 hours to fill your pool from the well. The thing you have to remember no matter which way you fill it, is that you have to keep the vaccum pump (keeping the liner against the walls) going during the fill (that is until the water level gets to about 2 feet below the top rdge of the pool). I did this with a shop vac. Or course, for about $300 (my area) for two 10,000 tanker truck loads, you can have the pool filled in about 45 minutes. Good luck.

Andy

[karrde97]

I filled my 21' AG from a 350' well. I hooked up a iron filter tube to the end of the hose and let it go. I shut it off at night because I needed to monitor it when it closer to the return/skimmer so I could cut holes. It took 3 days. I didn't have any problems with the well pump. Maybe because it's new construction. I'm on the same well as the township. If I run out of water, so do they.

[gwrace1]

We filled our 26000 gallon pool from our well. I would encourage you to pre-filter the water to remove any metals. We installed a whole house iron filter ahead of our water softener and used that water to fill the pool. It took about a week with several regenerations of the water softener and several cartridge replacments on the filter.

Our well pump is down around 300 feet and rated at 22 GPM. We wanted to use the softened water as we were planning on running a salt water pool with an SWG. It worked out really nice and we've had crystal clear water since startup in early March.

Now that we have our salt level where we want it I fill directly from the hose connection on the pump but still run the water thru a whole house iron filter before it goes into the pool. We have heavy metals in our water here in south Texas.