Need to drain and refill due to high stabilizer levels (I know I know trouble free pool blah blah blah)

I think Houston averages three months discharge for a standard yearly sewage cost. Anyone know what months I need to stay away from?

You should be able to call the city or water supplier and tell them what you are doing.

That should offer reprieve from the sewer portion of the 10-30k gallons of water.

At least that's what I heard from others in the tine filling pools.

~egon

Do you know when they read your meter?

Split the fill between before and after.

You should also be able to calculate how much water to replace in order to get the stabilizer to a manageable level. Shouldn't need a complete drain.

Yea it's a little over half of my 30,000 gallons. Don't mind paying for the water but I just want to make sure I'm not paying for this all year in sewage bills

I would call them like Dr. said.

They probably average your 3 highest months, so there may not be a way around it if you don't.

What ppm are your acid levels at? You shouldn't have to do a complete drain and refill to get the ppm down to 50 or so.

About 110 or so
Trouble free pool is saying 60% drain to get down to 40

If your CYA level is 110, you definitely need to drain about 60% of the water. Mine is 140 and I will be draining quite a bit at the end of the season.

Unless it is just killing you with how much chlorine you have to add, you may want to wait it out a bit and see. If we get a lot of rain, or you have to do a number of partial refills due to evaporation, that number may come down. It probably won't come all the way down on its own, but it may mean the difference of doing 30% instead of 60%.

Another thought is if you see a big storm coming, drain and let nature fill for you.

~egon

Agree with JDCAG, I would just wait it out, turn off your chlorinator and/or stop using anything with CYA in it. Just use liquid bleach to sanitize until winter sets in. Rain and evaporation refills should get it down to a manageable level by the time it starts to warm up.

When we bought our house, there was no sprinkler system and the pool needed replastering. Contractor told us that we could get a second water meter for the pool and sprinkler system for about $1,000 and its exempt from the sewage fee. Based on our consumption through the yard meter -- including the 30 kgal pool refill -- savings on the sewage fee paid back the thousand bucks in a year or so. You could probably get the sewage fee waived for a pool refill but, over the 6 years since we did it, the second meter has been a really good long-term alternative

Now that we have a black Lab that seems to splash 5k gal/month out of the pool it's even better economics

So through back channels, I got an answer:

quote:

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The answer is the sewer charges are tied to water consumption. Since there is no way to meter wastewater discharges, it is calculated each month per 1,000 gallons of consumption. The rates are listed here:

https://edocs.publicworks.houstontx.gov/documents/divisions/resource/ucs/2016_water_rates.pdf

What this means is the poster will pay for the wastewater charges during the billing cycle it is filled.

One item of note: Houston discontinued one-time pool fill credits. They used to allow one credit per year, but it stopped almost 10 years ago. Credits are only available for initial filling of new pools.

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~egon