Full drain, acid wash,
and a clean refill.
Calcium past 600 ppm, stains that won't spot out, decade-old water you just want gone. A full drain and clean resets your pool to day-one chemistry, but it's only worth doing when there's a real reason, and half the time we'll tell you there isn't one yet.
Every visit, every line spelled out.
- Submersible-pump drain (24–48 hours for typical residential pool)
- Plaster acid wash — measured pH-buffered solution, no shortcut over-acid
- Stain treatment — metal, copper, organic — chemistry matched to stain type
- Tile band cleaning (calcium line removal)
- Skimmer + main drain interior cleaning
- Refill chemistry reset — Utah-water-aware initial dose for the first 5 days
- Plaster condition report — we tell you honestly if resurfacing is the better call
What actually happens once you hit send.
$129 on-site, credited toward the job. We test calcium, look for stains, age your plaster. Half the customers we see don't need a drain — just a chemistry correction.
Plaster pools should never sit empty more than 5 days — Utah sun pops dry plaster fast. We schedule drain + refill back-to-back over 3 days.
24–48 hour drain, 4–8 hour acid wash depending on staining. We photograph stage-by-stage so you see exactly what the work produced.
Refill takes 18–36 hours on most municipal supplies. We come back to dose the first chemistry — Utah hard water hits a fresh refill hard, and the first 5 days set the season's CSI baseline.
The Utah-specific part of this service.
- Utah hard water (18–24 grains/gallon) means most pools hit "calcium too high to fix with chemistry alone" within 6–8 years of fill — far faster than coastal pools. Drain timing is a real Utah cost.
- Refill water in Northern Utah comes out of the tap at 250–400 ppm calcium. We pre-treat the refill so the first 5 days don't lay down a fresh scale layer on the new acid-washed plaster.
- Most "drain and clean" companies charge by the hour and finish in front of you with a stopwatch running. Ours is flat-rate, photographed, and quoted before we open a hose bib.
- We won't drain a plaster pool in May or October — temperature swings risk plaster shrinkage cracks. April or September is the right window.
The questions we get for this one.
Do I really need a drain or can chemistry fix it?
How often should a pool be drained?
Can I drain the pool myself to save money?
What if my plaster is in bad shape?
How long is my pool out of service?
Other things we tend to handle.
Resurfacing
Plaster cracks, tile falls off, coping spalls, the structural side of pool ownership eventually catches up.
Green-to-clean
Algae blooms just happen sometimes, a heat wave, a dead pump, a delayed opening, a cover collapse.
Equipment repair
Most repairs come up mid-summer, which is exactly when you don't want a broken pump.
Alright, let's get your pool on a route.
Quote takes about a minute on the page, no phone tag, no "depends on your pool" stall to pad the number.