Please help a novice pool owner to restart pump

[Stephanie]

Hello! Thank you for reading my post. Yesterday I thought I was helping out my Fiance' by cleaning out the pool filter next to the pool pump. My mistake was that I did not put the lever to "closed" before opening the filter. Now when I try and start up the pump, the water does not fill in the filter. I tried putting in tons of water, but it still doesn't work. Any ideas? Thanks!

[Watermom]

OOPS! I'll let someone else help you with this question but just wanted to pop in and say hi and welcome you to the forum!

[Stephanie]

Thanks Watermom. I hope someone can help me as my pool has been sitting unfiltered for over 24 hours. Help!

[PoolDoc]

Without seeing the pump, and what you are doing, I'm not sure what you need to do to get it primed . . . but, no problems: just pour in bleach till you get the pump back on. Add 2 gallons of PLAIN 6% household bleach to the pool each evening . . . and most likely you'll be fine.

If you can get an HTH 6-way test kit (only available at some Walmarts!) and test the water, we can tell you if you need to adjust that bleach dose.

Meanwhile, the NORMAL way to prime is to fill the pump basket with water, close it, turn the pump on (filter valve on 'filter' or 'recirculate') and let it run for 10 minutes. If it doesn't 'pick up' the water in 10 minutes, turn it off: you don't want to run the pump while it's dry. Without seeing your gear, I can't really help.

But you can keep the pool from getting messed up, if you'll just keep bleach in it!