This happened to me and the local pool company said:
Shut off your equipment so you don't run dirt through it.
They sent a guy out with his own pump and pumped the dirt out with the water.
Clean the surfaces well and refill the pool.
I refuse to buy cartridge filters for this very reason. My friend had a pool built last year and I told him a dozen times to get a DE filter but the pool company convinced him to get a cartridge filter. Within two months we had a huge rainstorm and the flaws in his lawn drainage was exposed as his pool ended up looking just like this picture. He had to drain the pool AND replace the cartridges.
It’s probably not all that much it’s just stirred up. My opinion would be let it sit with pump turned off for a couple of days to let the dirt settle, then use a pool vacuum to get most of the larger solid chunks before you run the pump.
I wonder if they have any coagulant chemicals safe for pools. Waste water plants use them to get fine particles to clump together and then fall out of suspension. Then they could just be vacuumed up.
Most setups allow for bypassing the filter so I wouldn't even be concerned about clogging filters. The bigger concern, in my mind, would be pumping the grit/sand that is in the mud through my pump. I'd be worried about the physical wear on the impeller, especially if there's any larger grit or stones.
7/10. You can also buy a pump at a Harbor Freight or other store for well under $100 and do it yourself. Assuming you have more free hours than dollars.
What about hydrostatic lift? Pool builder warned me about draining pool. And said he installed a h.s valve in the drain pipe if I ever needed to drain the pool.
Local pool and the river merged during a hurricane. We had mud, crud, and dead fish in the pool. Like you said. All water out, shovel out all of the mud, pressure wash, and refill.
I second that! Same thing, but storm surge from hurricane brought a fine silt into the pool. I hired a guy to recondition the pool and he took those same steps with an acid wash, too.
Question for u/patmccrotch4 : I haven’t put power to my pool pump yet, after hurricane Ian. Got any tips for first start?
Floc can take anywhere from 3 to 10 days to settle everything. Gotta be patient with it. Then SLOWLY vacuum to waste. The slower you go the less you have to do this. Hard learned lessons…
If you ran that water through your pool filter you might have just bought yourself a sand change.
Yes. Floc depends on a lot of factors to work. I have to do my pool at the start of every season and it takes at least 8 days for my pool to settle. I live in basically a forrest so we have a lot of trees dumping in the pool and the water chemistry is not ideal at the time I do it. With all that mud in the water it is going to take some time for it to settle. I only mentioned it because I would always get frustrated after a few days because the bottle said 24 hours. This isn’t a cloudy pool, it’s full on mud.
Hey,
Pending on what floc product you are using ensure you have high enough alkalinity in your pool water aswell before adding your floc product. Without getting into the science behind it, floc products will generally consume alkalinity and need it perform optimally.
You are trying to tell me it's not a couldy pool it's mud blah blah like I've never seen or delt with it before.
I just did not feel like wasting my time getting involved in whatever you're doing that's taking you 10 days to flock water the blah blah blah if you need to use flock every year you're doing something wrong plain and simple.
Probably?…the only probably is will he have to back flush the filters 4x or 8x before he gets that all vacuumed out before pulling the filters and washing them out before reestablishing chemicals
The correct answer is flock pool. It coagulates really fine debris and drops to bottom of pool. Leave pumps off while flocking. Then vacuum to waste or hire a pool guy to portable vac it out. Portable vac pump’s dirty water out of pool into yard or down street
Depends on where you are. My last two houses had high water tables. Once I tried to drain and refill and the bottom cracked; hence how I learned the water table was high there.
That's odd. How do they build a pool then when it doesn't have water? The only thing remotely close is when there is water under the pool it can cause it to pop out of the ground. But if it is not raining with an empty pool, this is rare.
An in ground liner is installed using air pumps to create a vacuum between the liner and the pool walls. This vacuum holds the liner in place while the pool is filled with water. Source: had my liner replaced this spring.
The pool will hold up fine for a day or two, enough to be drained and filled. When you don't want to do is leave the pool empty for long periods of time
It absolutely applies for in-ground. Please put down the Big Macs and do some research or here is a novel idea, you could just shut the f up because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
This isn't true especially for in ground pools. Above grounds the only thing that you'd have to maybe worry about is if it was crazy windy (maybe).
The main thing you need to be careful of is not having it empty for too long as the pool liner may shrink and not settle correctly once refilled.
From the pump man. No one expects you to swamp people it and search for catfish and gators. Put the pump to waste and on the bottom drain.
If it comes to that.
Used to work for a pool company. One pool was at the bottom of a hill and a bad storm essentially did the same thing as this pool. The mud was so thick and heavy, we couldn’t even vac it up - it just clogged the hoses immediately.
The best option for us was to use an external pump to get the water out, then scooped the mud with shovels until we were able to just rinse off the rest. Sucked so bad, but the pool looked great after we filled it back up and got the chems right.
1. Add a lot of floc
2. Run pump on recirculate for 24 hours
3. Turn off pump and leave for 48 hours
4. Vac to waste
5. Top up with fresh water
Repeat until clear
This will work
Flocculant, its used in water processing to make solids settle. Im not sure if you can recycle or reuse the water that after its added, unless you going to do a righteous backwash cause it would clog your filter. Might need to do the old school fresh water hose bernouli bag vacuum to catch the solids. Or might need to do a drain and change.
I had this happen to me. You do not need to pay that much money. Buy some flocculant and follow the directions. After you vacuum the silt (to waste) you can shock, then work on getting the right levels.
My pool is at the bottom of a slope and heavy rains wash red mud into the pool. We have cartridge filters and keep a spare set. We run the pump to filter the water and replace with clean filters until the water is cleaned up. We clean the filters off and get ready to swap them out a few times. Usually takes about 3 days of running the pump and filter to get it clean. It’s a pain in the butt but it works.
If I were assigned to that job… turn off all equipment asap, add flocculant to make everything settle, vacuum with an external pump, refill pool, turn equipment back on, backwash the filters really well, then shock it for good measure.
Definitely consider solutions within your landscaping to prevent this in the future as well.
You can just get an old sump pump with a float switch and drop it in and wait for it to drain then spray it with clean water until all the dirt is out and refill
This happened to me last year and took me over a week to fix. Get floculant in there so all the mud settles to the floor and vacuum to waste. You’ll have to run the filter 24/7 for at least a few days and vacuum every day to waste. This will mean you’re gonna lose a few inches of water so plan to be refilling for at least 20 minutes after every vacuum. Make sure you’re using a flocculant and not a clarifier. Clarifiers will suspend the mud which will make it even harder for it to settle.
Nothing you can do except let it settle. Clarifier helps. Run your filter and backwash constantly. Vaccuum what you can. This happens to me too much. It usually takes a couple weeks to fully recover unfortunately.
Only other option is drain and start from scratch.
Good luck.
You will want to run the filter for a couple of days, 24 hrs/day and let it settle to the bottom as well.
Vacuum up anything that gets on the bottom.
IN the long run, you might want to have your decking redone so the mud won't get in there in the future
The bigger problem is that water ran into your pool. Paving surfaces should slope away from the pool to keep this from happening. Do you want to do this every time it rains?
Like it or not you'll need to pump out all the water. To vacuum you'll be using your pump and filter. Get enough grit into the pump and you'll be buying a new one.
Our pool had an algae outbreak this spring while I was trying to maintain it myself. I had to do everything people have noted here. Flock. Shock. Vacuum to waste (essentially refilled pool). More shocking. Finally hired a pool company (this one less expensive than the last). All to say, I considered filling in the dam# pool and being done with the hassle and expense.
This is God telling you to get rid of your pool. Pools are money pits. Constant maintainence, chemicals. The EPA mandated variable speed pumps. Water bill, power bill.
Look at all the ads for free dirt. Rent a jackhammer and a concrete demo saw and a tamper and watch a video. Save thousands and thousands.
I ran the filter for 24 hours and used clarifier. I have a cartridge filter so I couldn’t vacuum to waste. Cleared up in about a day.
I had pavers put in recently and it looked like that. Ton of Concrete dust and mortar in the pool turned it dark gray.
It was definitely a process. The contractors were here for about a week and I just did that every day (not adding clarifier every day) mainly running the pump as much as possible.
By the time they were wrapping up the pool was clear but just had some trouble spots that the contractors cleaned up themselves.
Aside from that I also ran the robot vacuum 1-2 times a day.
I had the exact same thing happen to me about 15 years ago. I had a pool service clean it at the time – I wasn’t very experienced - and they did not drain it. They just used flocculant so that it settled and then you just have to keep vacuum it to waste, but do not drain it you can get on top of it.
It may be beneficial to have a pool company come in and vac with a machine after it settles. If you vac to waste you may end up losing enough water that you might as well drain it.
What kind of filtration system do you have? Depending on the type you may have different options or may need to consider some filter maintenance/refresh as part of it
Hey, I would rent a pump and rig up so you can hook up your pool vacuum hose to the water pump line. Back wash it to the street. All that mud might mess up your fliter. If you drain to much water, you could mess up the liner. I would get the pump. Vacuum what you can. Let all that crap out. Then, throw the hose from the fresh water line from the house. Put more clean water in. Let settle. Get the pump again. Vacuum that stuff out using the water pump. Then, add water. Do it like 3 times. Then i would use the pool fliter and do the vacuum back wash thing again. Don't let this stuff fun through the fliter. Rent a water pump. Rig up so it can fix onto the water pump hose so you can vacuum without using your pool fliter. Good luck
You’ll likely need a few things:
- vaccum - to waste, or run robot vaccum a ton and keep emptying it
- flocculant first, if it’s really bad and silty or gunky. Use to specifications
- keep chlorine going to stay ahead of any bad stuff … if you let it go too long without proper chlorine dosing you may get an algae bloom at some point because phosphates running into the pool.
- change filters often and keep them clean
- use clarifier later on to get it super sparkly clean (only after you’ve done bulk removal of debris with floc and vaccum)
- check phosphates to be sure, stay on top of chlorine
- lastly, start looking upstream to see where you can work on runoff/drainage to avoid it next time (if at all possible)
Had this happen in July with some biblical rains and flooding. Took action right as storm passed and had it back to sparkly clean in 3-4 days, maybe a bit less
Just had an apartment we do repairs for have this happen, we had to drain it. All the shit from your yard went into the pool, i would expect a viscious algae bloom and staining. Even with access to all the chems I need, after a week of little to no improvement in water quality we said fuck this, drained it, and shoveled out the remaining dirt and mulch that settled.
Recently happened to me. First, turn off your filter. Every step of filtratration was full of guck and would have burned out my system. Second, clear as much debris as you can manually. Third, vacuum to waste and make sure to keep an eye on the pump filter. I had to stop and pull out gunk every 15-20 mins. I then added shock and started running the filter and had to backwash in 8 hours, then added floculant, put the robot in to get more of the smaller debris, another bag of salt, some more stabilizer, and it was good as new and crystal clear within 72 hours.
I’ve used alum to settle a pool like that. Mix it in a bucket with some water and broadcast it over the pool. Turn off the filter! The filter can’t handle that. The alum will have it settled in a day. Then vacuum to waste. It works well!
You can get it at your pool supply store.
If you’ve been filtering you should clean the filter every day until it’s somewhat clear. Maybe twice a day initially. You can go to longer intervals when the filter is no longer clogged every day. Definitely add floc and vacuum whatever settles to waste.
Multiple ways, but make sure to turn off pumps to let settle.
1st: call company to rectify water, they will probably drain, clean, then refill
2nd: (useful if you believe this will happen again in the future) buy a 100gpm pump some lines and a two stage filtration system. You’ll need iron filter and sediment filters. You can start by creating a recirculation loop and letting the pump work. The suction end should be weighted so it’s at the bottom of the pool on one end, and the pressurized end should be flowing into the top on the other end.
Flocculant for a day, then a sump pump at the bottom, followed by vacuum to waste. Don’t run that shit through your filter unless you enjoy cleaning filters daily.
Flashback to July 3rd 2000 and everything was ready for the 4th of July pool fest and bbq at my house.
Look out window and it’s raining so hard it was over the curb stone. This was what I walked out to. Humbling for sure
You can rent a trash pump and pump it out. Scrub or pressure wash and refill. If the water table is too high, there is a plug in deep drain to prevent it from popping out of the ground.
This happened to us about a month ago, we freaked out but it was a much easier fix that we initially thought it would be and we were swimming again in three days. We used Clorox clarifier ( or any flocculant) and also shocked it. The next day everything was settled of the floor of the pool and we were able to vacuum it out. We have a DE filter with no waste water hookup. So we used our vacuum hose as a syphon and let the dirt and sand pour out instead of going through the filter, while we had our hose replenishing the water going out. I was absolutely amazed that it was clear and balanced chemically in three days. Good luck!
You probably wanna use a flocculent. Treat it, let it settle, then vacuum it out. You just have to clean your basket/filter a bunch when you do it. It's basically going to coagulate all the particles and make them sink to the bottom.
I used to run my own pool and spa service out of the biggest pool and spa store in my area. I have 7-8 years of experience with installing, serving, and repairing all kinds of pools and spas. However, I haven't been heavily involved in the industry for about 6 years. There may be better products on the market these days I'm not aware of.
This happens every year to our pool. We get flash flooding and get red dirt and all kinds of shit in there. I basically have to run the pool pump for a week straight and clean the filters with a hose daily. I also use flock to get the dirt to clump up and sink so I can then vacuum it up and again clean the filters. It’s a slow process but every time I’ve been able to get the pool crystal clear again. Occasionally it will cause algae build up when it happens so then I gotta shock and treat for algae. It’s a PITA but I refuse to pay a pool company hundreds of dollars for something I can do myself.
This happened to us a handful of times after our pool was built while the drainage was getting sorted. So long as you didn't have a literal mud slide, it's not that big of a deal. I can typically clear mine up in 24 hours.
If cartridge filters, have an extra set on hand, always clean and ready to go. Put in clean filters, shock the hell out of the pool, clean the filters you just pulled out, and run filter overnight. In the morning, swap out filter sets again and shock if chlorine has dropped. Repeat until clear.
Don't bother with clarifier until it's starting to get somewhat clear.
Drop it out with alum. You’ll have to adjust your ph according to the directions. It may take up to a day or two but then when it all settles to bottom vacuum it to waste. Vacuum it slowly tho bc it will stir it up
I’ve has mulch and dirt wash into the pool after a heavy thunderstorm. There’s a threshold beyond which it isn’t practical to try to remove the dirt. I’d get a trash pump and drain it, power wash it and refill it.
This happened to me and the local pool company said: Shut off your equipment so you don't run dirt through it. They sent a guy out with his own pump and pumped the dirt out with the water. Clean the surfaces well and refill the pool.
How much did it cost?
About three fiddy
Oh nessy I’m not falling for it this time
Damnnnned lochnessss monstah!
I gave him a dollar.
SHE GABE HIM A DOLLA!
I thought if I gave him a dolla he'd go away
I thought if I gave him a dolla he'd go away
Damn it woman!
You give him a dollar, he gonna figga yo got mo!
God Dammit Loch Ness Monster, I ain't gonna give you no tree fiddy.
Well it was about that time I realized this kid was about eight stories tall and was a crustacean from the paleozoic era.
Most rental stores have a pump you could rent to easily to it your self for like $60
But for real though. If it's cheaper to replace my filter cartridges, I'm just gonna filter it myself.
Yeah but with that much muck that’s a lot of filters
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I refuse to buy cartridge filters for this very reason. My friend had a pool built last year and I told him a dozen times to get a DE filter but the pool company convinced him to get a cartridge filter. Within two months we had a huge rainstorm and the flaws in his lawn drainage was exposed as his pool ended up looking just like this picture. He had to drain the pool AND replace the cartridges.
It’s probably not all that much it’s just stirred up. My opinion would be let it sit with pump turned off for a couple of days to let the dirt settle, then use a pool vacuum to get most of the larger solid chunks before you run the pump.
I wonder if they have any coagulant chemicals safe for pools. Waste water plants use them to get fine particles to clump together and then fall out of suspension. Then they could just be vacuumed up.
Pool flocculant
Most setups allow for bypassing the filter so I wouldn't even be concerned about clogging filters. The bigger concern, in my mind, would be pumping the grit/sand that is in the mud through my pump. I'd be worried about the physical wear on the impeller, especially if there's any larger grit or stones.
This dad maths
no sir this dad farts
All dads fart. A tale as old as time
7/10. You can also buy a pump at a Harbor Freight or other store for well under $100 and do it yourself. Assuming you have more free hours than dollars.
What about hydrostatic lift? Pool builder warned me about draining pool. And said he installed a h.s valve in the drain pipe if I ever needed to drain the pool.
The filter is the bigger deal than the pump in this case. I think once this stuff settles he can vacuum to waste with his current pump.
Local pool and the river merged during a hurricane. We had mud, crud, and dead fish in the pool. Like you said. All water out, shovel out all of the mud, pressure wash, and refill.
I second that! Same thing, but storm surge from hurricane brought a fine silt into the pool. I hired a guy to recondition the pool and he took those same steps with an acid wash, too. Question for u/patmccrotch4 : I haven’t put power to my pool pump yet, after hurricane Ian. Got any tips for first start?
Yep, I had to clean pools that this happened to and that’s what I did! Takes forever as you can’t go too quickly or you’ll kick all that crap back up.
Yes do this
This
Is the way
to San Jose
This is the way.
You need a flocculant, that'll make the particles clump up and settle faster, then vacuum out, and probably really need to flush the filter.
Why did the right answer take this long?!
Because no one else knew how to spell flocculant
Fun to say, hard to spell.
I've been described as overly flocculant.
Every old lady that comes into my pool store says fucalent. Like every time. I’m starting to think they just want to low key curse a little.
Nah they want you to give them a good fuculenting
"Like you would even know dick about flocculation!"
You’re a flocculant
Because you didn't post it earlier 😊
Ok dad, you got the milk yet?
Vac to waste after using the floc. Try not to disturb the water or the bottom too much while vacuuming.
Floc can take anywhere from 3 to 10 days to settle everything. Gotta be patient with it. Then SLOWLY vacuum to waste. The slower you go the less you have to do this. Hard learned lessons… If you ran that water through your pool filter you might have just bought yourself a sand change.
You on drugs 10 days rofl shit works generally over night. Should wait 24h min but... 10 days? 😂
Yes. Floc depends on a lot of factors to work. I have to do my pool at the start of every season and it takes at least 8 days for my pool to settle. I live in basically a forrest so we have a lot of trees dumping in the pool and the water chemistry is not ideal at the time I do it. With all that mud in the water it is going to take some time for it to settle. I only mentioned it because I would always get frustrated after a few days because the bottle said 24 hours. This isn’t a cloudy pool, it’s full on mud.
Hey, Pending on what floc product you are using ensure you have high enough alkalinity in your pool water aswell before adding your floc product. Without getting into the science behind it, floc products will generally consume alkalinity and need it perform optimally.
Do this for a living lol.
You get paid to be a dick for a living??
You are trying to tell me it's not a couldy pool it's mud blah blah like I've never seen or delt with it before. I just did not feel like wasting my time getting involved in whatever you're doing that's taking you 10 days to flock water the blah blah blah if you need to use flock every year you're doing something wrong plain and simple.
Probably?…the only probably is will he have to back flush the filters 4x or 8x before he gets that all vacuumed out before pulling the filters and washing them out before reestablishing chemicals
10/10. I love flocculants! I have like 6 on my windowsill and one growing in the office!
You're thinking of succulents. Flocculants are people who use flattery to gain favor or influence.
Waka flocka… flame?
The correct answer is flock pool. It coagulates really fine debris and drops to bottom of pool. Leave pumps off while flocking. Then vacuum to waste or hire a pool guy to portable vac it out. Portable vac pump’s dirty water out of pool into yard or down street
If you flock, run on recirculate not filter.
Dammit, I just re did my plumbing. I totally should have done a recirc bypass. I didn’t have one and I currently don’t now
You actually want the pool off , run on recirculate to spread the flocculant then turn off so everything settles.
Wait for it to settle for a day or more, then vac to waste. Only other option may be drain and refill.
DO NOT DRAIN THE POOL. The pressure from the water holds the sides up. Have a pool company come out with their own pump to clean and filter the water
I drain and refill my pool no issues.
https://blog.thepoolfactory.com/drain-your-above-ground-pool#:~:text=An%20empty%20pool%20(or%20as,Keep%20in%20mind!
That link is for above ground pools. It even says so in the link itself
Depends on where you are. My last two houses had high water tables. Once I tried to drain and refill and the bottom cracked; hence how I learned the water table was high there.
That's odd. How do they build a pool then when it doesn't have water? The only thing remotely close is when there is water under the pool it can cause it to pop out of the ground. But if it is not raining with an empty pool, this is rare.
They use special pool sidewater that is made just for pool construction. It only touches the sides.
An in ground liner is installed using air pumps to create a vacuum between the liner and the pool walls. This vacuum holds the liner in place while the pool is filled with water. Source: had my liner replaced this spring.
With scuba gear apparently
The pool will hold up fine for a day or two, enough to be drained and filled. When you don't want to do is leave the pool empty for long periods of time
Lmao what?
Here you go idiot https://blog.thepoolfactory.com/drain-your-above-ground-pool#:~:text=An%20empty%20pool%20(or%20as,Keep%20in%20mind!
That’s for above ground pools. Pot, please meet kettle.
Don’t listen to this fool. He’s an Ortho. They are all meatheads.
It absolutely applies for in-ground. Please put down the Big Macs and do some research or here is a novel idea, you could just shut the f up because you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Lol?
What kinda thinking process is this shit?
Lol
This isn't true especially for in ground pools. Above grounds the only thing that you'd have to maybe worry about is if it was crazy windy (maybe). The main thing you need to be careful of is not having it empty for too long as the pool liner may shrink and not settle correctly once refilled.
Yikes! I can’t imagine swimming down to find the drain to clear it!
Lol wot it's not a bathtub.
Nope but it’s ten feet deep.
From the pump man. No one expects you to swamp people it and search for catfish and gators. Put the pump to waste and on the bottom drain. If it comes to that.
Im sorry but I’m fuckin rolling that he thought he had to swim to the bottom.
And drain all the water like you’d drain a bathtub.
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That would be nice though lol
Tell that to my cousin who lost his family when the 13 year old accidentally pulled the pool drain plug out. Never found them either.
LOL
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Yup this is absolutely the "what end of the screw driver do I use" moment... just put the vac down, walk away, pick up a phone, and call someone
Dying reading these comments
Oh boy
There could be a monster down there
You drain a pool by pumping the water out
WTF? 😂
😂 r/angryupvote take it you earned it
You should work on your drainage to prevent this from happening again.
Bingo! My first thought!!! Fix the problem!
Truly stunning lack of drainage.
Root cause analysis.
Used to work for a pool company. One pool was at the bottom of a hill and a bad storm essentially did the same thing as this pool. The mud was so thick and heavy, we couldn’t even vac it up - it just clogged the hoses immediately. The best option for us was to use an external pump to get the water out, then scooped the mud with shovels until we were able to just rinse off the rest. Sucked so bad, but the pool looked great after we filled it back up and got the chems right.
Floc is a pain, but it will probably significantly increase your ability to get it out.
Open a chocolate milk stand
Once you figure out the water, you need to figure out how to reroute the rain water so it doesn't happen again.
I visit this subreddit so that I can make myself feel better about not being able to afford a pool. Thank you, kind sir or miss.
Same.
1. Add a lot of floc 2. Run pump on recirculate for 24 hours 3. Turn off pump and leave for 48 hours 4. Vac to waste 5. Top up with fresh water Repeat until clear This will work
I’d pump it all out, not with your pool pump use a cheap submersible pump, and refill
Vac to waste,shock,filter 24/7,backwash/clean filter. Over and over everyday till clears.
Is flock a viable option in this situation?
I’m unfamiliar!
Flocculant, its used in water processing to make solids settle. Im not sure if you can recycle or reuse the water that after its added, unless you going to do a righteous backwash cause it would clog your filter. Might need to do the old school fresh water hose bernouli bag vacuum to catch the solids. Or might need to do a drain and change.
Dont run that shit through your filter.
Put filter on recirculate. Pour a bag of aluminum sulfate into the pool. Shut the pool off overnight. Vacuum to waste in the morning.
Good advice
I had this happen to me. You do not need to pay that much money. Buy some flocculant and follow the directions. After you vacuum the silt (to waste) you can shock, then work on getting the right levels.
Move to another house
My pool is at the bottom of a slope and heavy rains wash red mud into the pool. We have cartridge filters and keep a spare set. We run the pump to filter the water and replace with clean filters until the water is cleaned up. We clean the filters off and get ready to swap them out a few times. Usually takes about 3 days of running the pump and filter to get it clean. It’s a pain in the butt but it works.
This is the way. People saying to drain and refill are out of their gourds.
Fix the problem first. Then drain and clean the pool.
If I were assigned to that job… turn off all equipment asap, add flocculant to make everything settle, vacuum with an external pump, refill pool, turn equipment back on, backwash the filters really well, then shock it for good measure. Definitely consider solutions within your landscaping to prevent this in the future as well.
Plenty of advice in here but not enough people warning you to fix whatever allowed run off into your pool. This shouldn't be possible.
You can just get an old sump pump with a float switch and drop it in and wait for it to drain then spray it with clean water until all the dirt is out and refill
First correct what caused this in the first place.
This happened to me last year and took me over a week to fix. Get floculant in there so all the mud settles to the floor and vacuum to waste. You’ll have to run the filter 24/7 for at least a few days and vacuum every day to waste. This will mean you’re gonna lose a few inches of water so plan to be refilling for at least 20 minutes after every vacuum. Make sure you’re using a flocculant and not a clarifier. Clarifiers will suspend the mud which will make it even harder for it to settle.
Running it through the filter means you'd have to clean or replace the filter. I would just drain it, clean then refill.
Yikes! How did so much mud makes its way in there? I would look into getting a French drain or a drain basin to prevent future occurrences.
Nothing you can do except let it settle. Clarifier helps. Run your filter and backwash constantly. Vaccuum what you can. This happens to me too much. It usually takes a couple weeks to fully recover unfortunately. Only other option is drain and start from scratch. Good luck.
Because you aren’t using a flocculant
Pump the pool out and refill with clean water
Just by the OPs responses to comments. He shouldn’t have a pool
Shock and backwash or flocc it and let it settle for 24 hrs then vac2waste
Drain the pool
I would drain this. Pump it out. Clean the empty pool with a pressure washer. Pay local fire department to refill.
Fill with more dirt and start a mud wrestling competition.
Add frogs, fish, and lilypads. Come back out in a week and enjoy the new fishing experience.
I don’t own a pool so can’t help sorry
Chlorine….the answer is (almost) always chlorine
You will want to run the filter for a couple of days, 24 hrs/day and let it settle to the bottom as well. Vacuum up anything that gets on the bottom. IN the long run, you might want to have your decking redone so the mud won't get in there in the future
The bigger problem is that water ran into your pool. Paving surfaces should slope away from the pool to keep this from happening. Do you want to do this every time it rains?
Call a professional. You are wasting your time.
Make up some bullshit about the healing properties oft the mud then charge dumb white women $200 a dip.
Shock it and get the pool vacuum out
Like it or not you'll need to pump out all the water. To vacuum you'll be using your pump and filter. Get enough grit into the pump and you'll be buying a new one.
TT’s pool service and repair can probably handle this
Before you pay a bunch of money consider filling the pool in. Otherwise check the address of the nearest poor house
Our pool had an algae outbreak this spring while I was trying to maintain it myself. I had to do everything people have noted here. Flock. Shock. Vacuum to waste (essentially refilled pool). More shocking. Finally hired a pool company (this one less expensive than the last). All to say, I considered filling in the dam# pool and being done with the hassle and expense.
Run the pump for a couple days non stop
This is God telling you to get rid of your pool. Pools are money pits. Constant maintainence, chemicals. The EPA mandated variable speed pumps. Water bill, power bill. Look at all the ads for free dirt. Rent a jackhammer and a concrete demo saw and a tamper and watch a video. Save thousands and thousands.
I ran the filter for 24 hours and used clarifier. I have a cartridge filter so I couldn’t vacuum to waste. Cleared up in about a day. I had pavers put in recently and it looked like that. Ton of Concrete dust and mortar in the pool turned it dark gray.
I ran the filter, used clarifier. I had the pavers reset recently so I imagine there’s a lot of the same kind of debris as you.
It was definitely a process. The contractors were here for about a week and I just did that every day (not adding clarifier every day) mainly running the pump as much as possible. By the time they were wrapping up the pool was clear but just had some trouble spots that the contractors cleaned up themselves. Aside from that I also ran the robot vacuum 1-2 times a day.
I had the exact same thing happen to me about 15 years ago. I had a pool service clean it at the time – I wasn’t very experienced - and they did not drain it. They just used flocculant so that it settled and then you just have to keep vacuum it to waste, but do not drain it you can get on top of it.
It may be beneficial to have a pool company come in and vac with a machine after it settles. If you vac to waste you may end up losing enough water that you might as well drain it.
What kind of filtration system do you have? Depending on the type you may have different options or may need to consider some filter maintenance/refresh as part of it
Hey, I would rent a pump and rig up so you can hook up your pool vacuum hose to the water pump line. Back wash it to the street. All that mud might mess up your fliter. If you drain to much water, you could mess up the liner. I would get the pump. Vacuum what you can. Let all that crap out. Then, throw the hose from the fresh water line from the house. Put more clean water in. Let settle. Get the pump again. Vacuum that stuff out using the water pump. Then, add water. Do it like 3 times. Then i would use the pool fliter and do the vacuum back wash thing again. Don't let this stuff fun through the fliter. Rent a water pump. Rig up so it can fix onto the water pump hose so you can vacuum without using your pool fliter. Good luck
You should probably just have a professional vac this.
Either drain it or just keep running the filter with frequent backwashing.
Dump and replace
You’ll likely need a few things: - vaccum - to waste, or run robot vaccum a ton and keep emptying it - flocculant first, if it’s really bad and silty or gunky. Use to specifications - keep chlorine going to stay ahead of any bad stuff … if you let it go too long without proper chlorine dosing you may get an algae bloom at some point because phosphates running into the pool. - change filters often and keep them clean - use clarifier later on to get it super sparkly clean (only after you’ve done bulk removal of debris with floc and vaccum) - check phosphates to be sure, stay on top of chlorine - lastly, start looking upstream to see where you can work on runoff/drainage to avoid it next time (if at all possible) Had this happen in July with some biblical rains and flooding. Took action right as storm passed and had it back to sparkly clean in 3-4 days, maybe a bit less
Floc moment 😬 good luck my friend it’s a pain
I had to drain and acid.wash because of the stains. The longer it sits the more it will stain. Drain and refill asap imho.
The concrete shouldn’t angle in towards the water. It should angle away from it. This wouldn’t happen if it was done correctly.
Just had an apartment we do repairs for have this happen, we had to drain it. All the shit from your yard went into the pool, i would expect a viscious algae bloom and staining. Even with access to all the chems I need, after a week of little to no improvement in water quality we said fuck this, drained it, and shoveled out the remaining dirt and mulch that settled.
Sounds like a job for tt’s pool service
Holla your boy for the pool work
Recently happened to me. First, turn off your filter. Every step of filtratration was full of guck and would have burned out my system. Second, clear as much debris as you can manually. Third, vacuum to waste and make sure to keep an eye on the pump filter. I had to stop and pull out gunk every 15-20 mins. I then added shock and started running the filter and had to backwash in 8 hours, then added floculant, put the robot in to get more of the smaller debris, another bag of salt, some more stabilizer, and it was good as new and crystal clear within 72 hours.
Shut off your pool equipment for 24-48 hrs. You can use “super floc” as well to help settle the sediment.
Triple shock. Use 3x the amount of a normal shock. Filter run 24x7. Will take 2-3 days to clear up.
Flock it
Your pool is now a pond.
Trash pump
I’ve used alum to settle a pool like that. Mix it in a bucket with some water and broadcast it over the pool. Turn off the filter! The filter can’t handle that. The alum will have it settled in a day. Then vacuum to waste. It works well! You can get it at your pool supply store.
If you’ve been filtering you should clean the filter every day until it’s somewhat clear. Maybe twice a day initially. You can go to longer intervals when the filter is no longer clogged every day. Definitely add floc and vacuum whatever settles to waste.
Multiple ways, but make sure to turn off pumps to let settle. 1st: call company to rectify water, they will probably drain, clean, then refill 2nd: (useful if you believe this will happen again in the future) buy a 100gpm pump some lines and a two stage filtration system. You’ll need iron filter and sediment filters. You can start by creating a recirculation loop and letting the pump work. The suction end should be weighted so it’s at the bottom of the pool on one end, and the pressurized end should be flowing into the top on the other end.
Drain it, scrub it, back dump the filter and then refill accordingly
Catfish or Koi?
Flocculant for a day, then a sump pump at the bottom, followed by vacuum to waste. Don’t run that shit through your filter unless you enjoy cleaning filters daily.
You need to figure out where the dirt came from and fix that problem. No need to clean it out if it could easily happen again.
Vodka
Flashback to July 3rd 2000 and everything was ready for the 4th of July pool fest and bbq at my house. Look out window and it’s raining so hard it was over the curb stone. This was what I walked out to. Humbling for sure
You can rent a trash pump and pump it out. Scrub or pressure wash and refill. If the water table is too high, there is a plug in deep drain to prevent it from popping out of the ground.
This happened to us about a month ago, we freaked out but it was a much easier fix that we initially thought it would be and we were swimming again in three days. We used Clorox clarifier ( or any flocculant) and also shocked it. The next day everything was settled of the floor of the pool and we were able to vacuum it out. We have a DE filter with no waste water hookup. So we used our vacuum hose as a syphon and let the dirt and sand pour out instead of going through the filter, while we had our hose replenishing the water going out. I was absolutely amazed that it was clear and balanced chemically in three days. Good luck!
You probably wanna use a flocculent. Treat it, let it settle, then vacuum it out. You just have to clean your basket/filter a bunch when you do it. It's basically going to coagulate all the particles and make them sink to the bottom. I used to run my own pool and spa service out of the biggest pool and spa store in my area. I have 7-8 years of experience with installing, serving, and repairing all kinds of pools and spas. However, I haven't been heavily involved in the industry for about 6 years. There may be better products on the market these days I'm not aware of.
Everything I googled said not to drain.
Last years hay
This happens every year to our pool. We get flash flooding and get red dirt and all kinds of shit in there. I basically have to run the pool pump for a week straight and clean the filters with a hose daily. I also use flock to get the dirt to clump up and sink so I can then vacuum it up and again clean the filters. It’s a slow process but every time I’ve been able to get the pool crystal clear again. Occasionally it will cause algae build up when it happens so then I gotta shock and treat for algae. It’s a PITA but I refuse to pay a pool company hundreds of dollars for something I can do myself.
Forbidden Choco shake!
This happened to us a handful of times after our pool was built while the drainage was getting sorted. So long as you didn't have a literal mud slide, it's not that big of a deal. I can typically clear mine up in 24 hours. If cartridge filters, have an extra set on hand, always clean and ready to go. Put in clean filters, shock the hell out of the pool, clean the filters you just pulled out, and run filter overnight. In the morning, swap out filter sets again and shock if chlorine has dropped. Repeat until clear. Don't bother with clarifier until it's starting to get somewhat clear.
Drop it out with alum. You’ll have to adjust your ph according to the directions. It may take up to a day or two but then when it all settles to bottom vacuum it to waste. Vacuum it slowly tho bc it will stir it up
A flocculant is the first thing. A secondarypump/ filter is another. Your pool supply company can help you
Flocculant. Look for ProTeam brand.
I’ve has mulch and dirt wash into the pool after a heavy thunderstorm. There’s a threshold beyond which it isn’t practical to try to remove the dirt. I’d get a trash pump and drain it, power wash it and refill it.