Help! My Pool is overflowing!

Monsoon season is just around the corner (or it may already be here depending on when you read this!) and if there’s one thing that we all feel helpless about, it’s standing on our window and watching the rains raise the water levels of our pool to the point of overflowing!

Short of having superpowers to stop the rain from coming, there are a couple of precautions we can take to prevent our pool from overflowing.

This may take some time and a lot of money in renovation costs, but many pool builders offer installation of overflow drainage systems for in-ground pools (if you don’t have one installed already that is. No shortcuts here.

It is worth noting though this will not prevent your pool from overflowing! This will just prevent the overflow from running off and combining with water from outside your pool and vice versa!

SEE ALSO: Swimming Pool Features that will make you go “wow”

Depending on where you live (or how good your weather forecaster is) you can pre-drain your pool with the forecasted amount of rainfall. This prevents your pool from overflowing and allows your yard to drain away the rainfall properly without the added load of overflowing pool water. A properly pre-drained pool serves two purposes.

• You can drain out the water while the drainage systems aren’t overloaded
• Prevents pooling of water from from your pool with the yard (or deck) water when drainage systems are slow to drain because of the high water volume from the rain. If your pool water overflows, there’s a huge chance that the drainage system can no longer handle the added volume and can cause pooling and backflowing of sewage into the yard (and into your pool!) giving you a much bigger headache than if you’ve pre-drained your pool.

Note: DO NOT EMPTY YOUR POOL. Just pre drain it with the forecasted rainfall or even just a few inches. One of the heaviest deluges in recent Australian history was around 15.6 inches in a 4-day period so that should give you an idea of how much water to pre-drain your pool.

Additional Note: It's EASIER to refill a pre-drained pool than to drain a flooded one!

If your swimming pool has overflowed for whatever reason then there’s no need to panic. Keep calm and carry on as they say. The first thing we need to do is to drain the excess water. If you have a sand filter, then draining the excess pool water is as simple as setting your multiport to its waste setting and allowing the pump to run until the water level has gone down.

If you have a cartridge filter, you can install a 3-way valve in between the pump and the filter and plumb in a dedicated waste line for situations like these. This is also a good idea if you happen to live in an area where the winds love to dump debris into your pool and you find yourself constantly dealing with large amounts of swimming pool debris.

The next option is to use a venturi pump to drain out the excess water. The venturi pump itself is quite cheap and it doesn’t need any electricity to operate. This is worthwhile to note especially after a storm if the power has been knocked out. And don’t think if a venturi pump as a single use gadget, it’s actually one of the things in Mr Pool Man’s toolbox that we consider invaluable. It’s our go-to tool when replacing our pool sand filter elements and for other floods and puddles around the house and shop!

Hopefully pre-draining your pool has prevented overflowing, or even if it did overflow, we hope that it didn’t cause extensive damage or flooding to your yard or pool area. Now after particularly heavy rains (especially if you’ve pre-drained your swimming pool) it’s imperative that you shock and balance your pool water. Even if there’s still rain predicted in the coming days, if the sun is out, you should really balance and shock your swimming pool water to prevent algae blooms. The time needed to shock and balance you pool is nothing compared to all of the time, effort, and expenses required to deal with green pool water!

SEE ALSO: Do THIS, not THAT. Swimming Pool Tips and Tricks

Hopefully this short guide can help you prevent your pool from overflowing with the coming of the monsoon season. If your pool has overflowed and you need help dealing with it afterward, you can check out our extensive guide on how to clean your swimming pool after a storm or a flood here and flood and disaster-proof your swimming pool here.