How can I open my inground swimming pool myself?

Question

How can I open my inground swimming pool myself?

Answer 1

A homeowner can do this themselves, but it is mucky, wet work.

You need to remove the winter cover water and debris if this is a water bag or lock in cover ( a pro would use a trash pump with a modified suction grate). You can actually clean the cover right where it is, while the water is pumping down by brushing it and pushing everything to the pump's suction hose. That way there's no dragging it to a space large enough and instead of one side always being dirty, both sides will be clean when you're done. Just a matter of hauling it up on the deck when all the water/ debris is off and folding it right there. No muss no fuss and a heck of a lot easier ( and less chance of damage to the cover) than dragging a cover around. If you have what's called a safety cover ( looks like a trampoline), you only need to unhook the straps since there is no cover water to deal with and pop the anchors back into the deck.

  Clean up the deck area. Install the drain plugs on pump, filter and heater if you have one using teflon tape where required. Re connect the pressure switch on a gas heater ( again, if you have one). Remove the winterizing plugs in the pool and install skimmer baskets and return eyeballs. In the skimmer, you may see two plugs. The one closest to your pool leads to the main drain, the one furthest  leads to the pump. I dunno if your main drain is valid ( works) or not, but it's best to leave that front plug where it is for now and just remove the one furthest from the pool. If you ascertain that your main drain is hooked up to the skimmer at that front plug later ( called an equalizer line) you can remove it then. It's not critical right now since any pool will operate with it plugged.

If this is a concrete pool with a marbalite finish, you may have staining around the pool wall. You can get rid of this with a 10% solution of acid/water in a plastic watering can and an acid brush. Add acid to water, never water to acid. Do it in sections and rinse well. If this is a vinyl liner pool and there is a ring of grime, you can use a kitchen scrubbie ( plastic 3M one) and some vinyl liner cleaner. "Hertel Plus" is best. You may find it in a hardware store in the household cleaning section. It's safe for vinyl ( even advertises it's good for liner pools on the back of the bottle in the last line) and hey...you can use it on other things too. It's also bio degradable. Other than that, you can buy some cleaner at a pool store for twice the price and half as effective.

Install any ladders or rails. For ladders remember to put the rubber bumpers in the bottom feet. Reinstall any pool lights that were dropped for winterizing and if you have one, the diving board.

Start filling the pool and give it a shock to keep the green away until the pool is filled up enough for start up.

That's an opening.

Starting up your pool is another chapter. For this, you probably want a pro in and watch him ( video the whole thing even) so that you can do it yourself next year. It's less physically demanding than the opening but also a little more complex, since every pool is different (type and equipment) and he may catch something that you missed on the opening. Typically, if you do it that way, you'll save 2/3rds of an average opening cost done by a pool company. That service guy is only going to be there for less than an hour for a start up and should only charge you that hourly rate not the 250 bucks plus an opening costs so long as you've done most of everything and need no repairs.

An opening is actually pretty fool proof, it's just dirty and time consuming to do which is why pool companies charge more for it than a closing. The worst that can happen is if you dump the cover contents into the pool by accident but as long as you have your thinking cap on that won't happen.

Answer 2

Well I would call a local place that does pools.. You wouldn't be able to do it by yourself.