Should You Drain Your Pool Before a Hurricane?

Short answer: no.

It is the most intuitive wrong idea in Florida pool ownership. A big storm is coming, a lot of rain is coming, the pool is already full — so make room. It feels like obvious preparation.

It is the one action that can turn a storm you would have shrugged off into a five-figure repair.

Why an empty pool is the dangerous one

A pool shell is a large watertight object buried in the ground. When the ground around it is saturated — which is precisely what a hurricane guarantees — that groundwater pushes up on the underside of the shell.

Full, the pool doesn’t care. Tens of thousands of pounds of water hold it down comfortably.

Empty it and you have removed the ballast while leaving the buoyancy. The shell can lift, tilt or crack. This isn’t a fringe scenario the industry invented to sell service calls — Florida’s own building code treats groundwater uplift as an expected condition, requiring an approved hydrostatic relief device in areas of anticipated water table. The code has a part in it specifically to bleed off this pressure. That is how routine the force is.

And in Tampa Bay the ground is often exactly the kind that does this. USGS mapping found the surficial aquifer under Pinellas County has a saturated thickness of more than 30 feet through most of the county. That water is already there in an ordinary week. After a hurricane it is there in abundance.

UF/IFAS Extension states the guidance without qualification:

Do not drain or partially drain your pool before a storm.

They list the risks as pump damage, potential fires, expensive refilling, pool cracking, plumbing damage and harm to the electrical system.

The advice conflict, stated honestly

You will find plenty of sources — including reputable pool companies — advising you to lower the water 12 to 18 inches before a storm. We are not going to pretend that advice doesn’t exist, because you have probably already read it.

It conflicts with the extension service’s guidance, and it is worth understanding what the disagreement is actually about.

Lowering the level manages overflow: rainwater raising the pool over the coping and across the deck. That is a real thing that happens.

Keeping the level manages buoyancy: the shell lifting because it no longer weighs enough. That is also a real thing that happens.

The question is which risk is worse where you live. Overflow spreads water across a deck and a yard, which is unpleasant and occasionally damaging. Buoyant failure damages the pool structurally, and a lifted or cracked shell is not something you patch.

On Florida’s Gulf coast, on ground where the code expects groundwater uplift, we weight the second risk far more heavily. If overflow genuinely threatens your house — because of how the deck falls, or where the pool sits relative to the slab — that is a drainage design problem to solve properly with your builder on a calm day, not something to improvise with a pump the night before landfall.

Don’t put the furniture in the pool

This one is folk wisdom passed down through generations of Florida homeowners, and UF/IFAS Extension is direct about it:

Never place patio furniture and outdoor accessories into the pool to keep them from blowing away.

The reasoning is straightforward once you hear it. Furniture in the water means corrosion, chemical reactions and permanent staining — and staining a pool interior badly enough means resurfacing it.

Run the numbers on that trade. A set of patio chairs is replaceable for a few hundred dollars. An interior finish is a different order of expense entirely, and you would be sacrificing the expensive one to protect the cheap one.

Put the furniture in the garage, the lanai, or on its side against the house. Anywhere but the water.

What to actually do

From UF/IFAS Extension’s guidance, and it is a short list:

Before the storm

• Leave the water in.
• Shock the pool, which helps stave off some of the algae and bacteria if your area floods.
• Keep patio furniture, outdoor accessories, landscape trimmings and pressure-washer spray out of the pool.

During the storm

• Keep the pump running for as long as the power is on, so the water keeps circulating through the filter.
• Empty the skimmer basket and clear the bottom drain when debris covers them.

After the storm

• Don’t start any cleanup until the area is safe: no downed power lines, and no snakes or alligators in the pool.
• Remove debris from the pool before it decomposes and stains the finish.
• Once the area around the pool is relatively dry of standing water, bring the water level back down to mid-way up the tile line, or half-way up the skimmer. Note the sequencing: the level comes down after, when the ground is no longer saturated, not before. Watch the pool while it drains.
• Expect to shock again once debris is removed and power is back.

Expect to rescreen. If you have a cage, the panels may well be gone and the frame standing. That is usually the enclosure doing its job rather than failing at it, and we explain the mechanism in Pool cage wind ratings in Tampa Bay.

The one line to remember

A pool full of dirty green water after a hurricane is a weekend of work.

A pool that floated out of the ground is a rebuild.

Everything above is just detail hanging off that comparison.

This article summarizes UF/IFAS Extension guidance and Florida Building Code requirements as published on 17 August 2026. It is general information. Follow the instructions of your local emergency management authority, and consult your own builder about your specific pool and site.