Pool Tile Cleaning Without Draining: What a 6 to 8 Inch Drawdown Involves

A lot of owners hear tile cleaning and picture an empty pool, a big hole in the backyard and a long wait for it to refill. That isn't how we do it. Calcium removal from tile and Pebble Tec doesn't require draining your pool. Here's the process from start to finish, so you know what happens in your backyard and what you need to do, which is very little.

Step one: lowering the water

We begin by lowering your water level 6 to 8 inches with a commercial grade water pump. The reason is straightforward. The calcium sits at and around the waterline, and we have to see and reach all of it. Dropping the level a few inches below the stained area exposes the staining fully, and the rest of the pool stays full.

That's a small slice of the pool's depth. A full drain is a much bigger undertaking: a lot of water goes down the drain and then has to come back, and an empty pool in desert heat leaves every surface exposed to the sun. For tile and Pebble Tec calcium, none of that is necessary.

Lowering the level also gives us a clear view of the whole stained band. Working right at the water surface, ripples and splash hide where the staining starts and stops. A few inches of clearance means we can see every edge of the scale, and that makes for a more even, more thorough result.

Step two: choosing the media and blasting

With the staining exposed, we decide which media suits your surface. Glazed tile, natural stone, Pebble Tec and brick don't all take the same treatment, so we match the media to what's in front of us. Then we use our blasting equipment to remove the scale and calcium buildup. The work goes surface by surface: waterline tile, grout, spillways, waterfalls, fountains and negative edge walls.

When the surfaces are clean, we rinse and hose off the surrounding deck area, so the deck is left clean along with the tile.

Step three: getting the spent media out

After the blasting, the spent media and the calcium it knocked loose settle at the bottom of the pool. We remove them with our own custom-fabricated portable pump and filter. That's a rig built for this job, and it's how the pool ends up looking nearly new again without having to sit empty.

Nothing about the cleanup asks anything of you either. You won't be handed a bucket of leftover grit or told to run your own filter for a weekend to catch what we missed. The media goes out with our equipment before we pack up.

Compared with the alternatives, owners tend to find the whole process quick and inexpensive. The alternatives are usually hours on your knees with a pumice stone or a bucket of harsh chemicals, and neither one makes a dent in thick scale the way blasting does.

Do you need to be home?

No. We need three things, and none of them is you standing in the yard. If we can get to the pool and use a power source and a water source, we can do the work while you're at the office or out for the day. Access is the part that sometimes needs a quick conversation ahead of time, such as a gate code or where to plug in, and once that's sorted out we handle the rest.

• Access to the pool area, whether that's an unlocked gate or an access arrangement we've talked through.
• A source of power we can plug into.
• A source of water we can use.

When you can swim, and what the water looks like

You can use your pool immediately after the cleaning. There's no waiting period built into the job.

Depending on the media used for your surface, the water may look cloudy at first. That's temporary. It clears as the pool filters, and it's back to clear in 24 to 36 hours. If you see haze the evening of the cleaning, that's the media and the fine particles from the scale still working through the filter, not a sign that something went wrong.

One more practical note. Because the water only comes down 6 to 8 inches, your pool has plenty of water in it when we finish, and getting back to your normal level is a matter of topping up rather than starting over.

We work in Anthem, New River, Desert Hills, Peoria, Surprise, Scottsdale, North Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Carefree, Paradise Valley and Phoenix. If you'd like to know what your pool would involve, call (480) 818-7235 for a free quote. A few questions and a few photos are usually enough for us to give you an estimate over the phone.