It may be our worst nightmare, but it happens. Broken glass in your commercial swimming pool. This is not only a nuisance, but can cause serious injury if someone were to get cut or injured. Broken glass in pool water is almost impossible to visually see! What makes it even more difficult is if the broken glass has turned to shards of broken glass. There are a lot of posts about this online, but we are going to focus on what you, the pool operator, can do.
Broken Glass in Your Pool from What?
There are many ways glass can end up broken in your swimming pool or other body of water. Beverage bottles like beer and soda are the number one culprit. We also have food containers to worry about. What about our pool furniture? Glass table tops can break and shards can get into the water. If we have overhead lighting made of glass bulbs, these could break also. Speaking of lights…what about our pool lights? They have a glass cover too, right?
You can put up a “No Glass In Pool Area” sign at your swimming pool but still run into unavoidable situations. Your pool decorative lighting and in-pool lighting can be unavoidable. But beware because any of the aforementioned glass pieces can break and cause a nuisance in your pool! Your best bet is not to allow or provide any glass that could potentially break in your pool area and possibly end up in the swimming pool. This can cause a pool operator a major headache!
Can I Vacuum the Glass Out of a Swimming Pool?
Based on my research, this is a bad idea. You can never really know if you have gotten all of the glass out. Glass shards can make it into the filter. This makes it a risk for the guy that does the next filter clean. Not to mention the damage the glass can cause inside the filter. Especially a cartridge filter that can be ripped. Then you are stuck buying new elements! As the glass travels through the system when you vacuum it, pieces of glass could get temporarily trapped, only to be released back into the water at a later time. So we get it–no vacuuming. But what can we do?
Turn off Pool Pump
This should be done immediately once you find out glass has been broken and introduced to the pool water. We do this to prevent pieces from entering our circulation system.
Time to Drain the Swimming Pool
We know, we know, this is a pain in the butt, but it is the correct way to handle broken glass in a swimming pool. Don’t use the main drain because, again, we don’t want glass in our system. Use a submersible pump instead.
Dry, Dry, Dry the Pool
This is the step that requires the most time. The hotter the climate, the quicker this step will go. You can even use fans if you want to expedite the process. Please note, that the pool must be completely dry in order to successfully perform the next steps.
Sweep, Sweep, Sweep the Your Drained and Dried Swimming Pool
You need to sweep all you can into piles and either use a dustpan or shop vac to remove it. Doing this process multiple times will aid in getting all of the glass.
Vacuum, Vacuum, Vacuum
NOW it is time to vacuum the entire pool surface. This can be a tedious task as it needs to be repeated because how in the heck are you going to know where you have already vacuumed? It’s not like carpet where you can see lines!
It’s Almost Swim Time!
Now we can refill the pool. This requires testing the water so we can properly balance it. If you have the LaMotte testing system, just fill a disc and insert it into the spin lab, and in 60 seconds, your results are sent to your Pool Shark H2O App for proper dosing instructions. Don’t have the spin lab yet? No problem! Use your reagents and manually enter your results into the Pool Shark H2O App. Not only will the app give you accurate readings and dosing instructions, but will digitally log it for you! Pool Shark H2O to the rescue!
Your best bet is to try to keep glass out of the area where your water is. But, hey, people are people. See you poolside!
