Filling a Swimming Pool With a Hose
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What is the best way to fill your swimming pool with water? In this instance I am talking about more than just a top-up of a few inches of water. What is the best way to fill your pool after completing a renovation or even new construction of your pool? Most pool owners when asked this question tend to assume that trucking in water is the fastest and easiest way to fill a pool...and they are half right. Filling a pool with water trucks certainly is one of the fastest ways to fill your pool but you can count on that you will be paying a premium for that service. Sometimes this premium is warranted but many times it is not and the pool owner would be much further ahead to simply fill the pool with their garden hose.
A standard sized garden hose (commonly 1/2" or 3/4" in size) will easily fill even the largest of swimming pools in just a few days time. Commonly a large pool like a 20x40' pool with a deep end for diving will take 48 hours to fill with a single garden hose. Of course the exact amount of time that your pool takes will depend on the size of the water lines you have in your house plumbing, and also the size of the garden hose you are using to deliver the water. The deep end fills quickly because it is a much smaller volume and surface area. Once the deep end is full a general guideline for how ling it takes to fill a pool is about one inch per hour. So in 24 hours you might expect your pool water level to rise about two feet. Again, pool volume and rate of supply of water will determine the actual time your pool takes to fill. This is just a starting point to help you understand how long to expect your pool to take to fill. Most residential pools will fill in one to three days with a single garden hose.
Multiple hoses filling a pool - Note that there can be some benefit from multiple hoses depending on your plumbing arrangement, but in general there are diminishing benefits for each extra hose that you add. Each pipe in your home can only deliver so much water. Ten hoses on one hose bib will be limited by the pipe supplying the hose bib, and not the ten hoses themselves. Ten hoses connected to different taps around your home would likely yield better results, but you will still be limited overall by the main house supply pipe being fed from the city supply. Fortunately these are usually larger than the rest of the house plumbing and multiple hoses from different sources around your home likely will speed up the filling process.
Do not leave hoses in the pool - The hose can snake and move around in your pool from the pressure of the water coming out of it. Even if yours does not seem to do this, it might start at night when the water pressure on your street is higher. Hoses also can be sharp or have hose clamps or other imperfections which can be sharp and cause damage to the interior of your pool, or even staining on the surface depending on the kind of pool you have. Commonly you want to position your hoses on the pool deck so that they arc into the pool and land in the pool in the deep end. This prevents any chance from your hose to damage the pool interior surface, and the noise of the falling water is a reminder to you that the pool is still filling. People overfill their pools with shocking regularity.
When to use water trucks instead of a hose - There definitely are times when water trucks are preferable to filling your pool with a hose. The first is a situation where you are not on city water but instead have a well as your water source. Wells can run dry and foul if you try to fill a pool with them. Additionally wells will often have impurities like minerals, phosphates, metals, adverse pH etc. and all of these can cause a host of problems for swimming pools. This is especially true for concrete swimming pools which will often have a new plaster, pebble or similar mortar based interior surface. These surfaces require constant submersion to cure properly and you definitely do not want adverse water conditions in a pool with a fresh interior surface which will be prone to staining issues. In these cases the cost of the water trucks is less than the cost of defects which can happen to the pool surface from filling too slowly or from filling from a poor water source.
It is worth mentioning that when you pay for water service to your home you are often charged for both the water supply as well as the sanitary waste charges for that same volume of water. You should check with your water utility to see if you can receive a credit for when you fill your pool. Commonly the water charge will be cut in half for you since the pool water did not exit through the sanitary line. This makes filling your pool cost half as much money...and the cost is already so much less than filling with water trucks.
I definitely understand the motivation of a pool owner to want to fill the pool as soon as possible and get swimming, but for the most part trucking water in is an expense that you can avoid and the added time it will take versus the water trucks is negligible. It used to be, back in the day, that people would borrow neighbors hoses and toss them over the fence to help swimming pools fill up more quickly, but people know their neighbors less than they used to, and this now represents more cost than it used to as well. However, if you are friendly with the neighbors then borrowing a hose from their hose will absolutely speed up the process of filling your pool with just a hose.
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Swimming Pool Steve is an award winning, second generation swimming pool specialist from Ontario Canada and one of the most trusted voices in the swimming pool industry. With over 20,000,000 views on the Swimming Pool Steve YouTube Channel, winner of the Pleatco Pool & Spa Industry Leadership award and author of hundreds of pool and spa articles both online and in print. Steve is committed to helping pool and spa owners as well as pool and spa industry workers learn more about the technical side of building, renovating, repairing and maintaining all types of swimming pools and spas. Follow Swimming Pool Steve on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
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