Pool water and palm trees

[ZPalms]

I have this area in my yard that the pool water runs down into when we put the pool on waste or whatever and I was thinking of planting palms in that area but I wanted to know is it safe to put palm trees in the path of the pool run off water

[sonoranfans]

Pool water can carry a fair amount of hardness as it is an evaporative concentrator of your tap water.  IF your water is not hard, no problem, but the pool water can be pretty hard as it ages if your tap water is hard.  Hardness can make soil hydrophobic (water repellent) not good.  You could soak it periodically with humic acid solution in summer to rinse away accumulated hardness.  If you have a salt water pool it can make your soil accumulate salt, another thing that stresses the plant.  Humic acid can address these issues if used periodically in the warm wet season.  I wouldnt worry about chlorine as it will be consumed rapidly as it contacts organic material in the soil.

[ZPalms]

11 hours ago, sonoranfans said:

Pool water can carry a fair amount of hardness as it is an evaporative concentrator of your tap water.  IF your water is not hard, no problem, but the pool water can be pretty hard as it ages if your tap water is hard.  Hardness can make soil hydrophobic (water repellent) not good.  You could soak it periodically with humic acid solution in summer to rinse away accumulated hardness.  If you have a salt water pool it can make your soil accumulate salt, another thing that stresses the plant.  Humic acid can address these issues if used periodically in the warm wet season.  I wouldnt worry about chlorine as it will be consumed rapidly as it contacts organic material in the soil.

So if I have well water thats salt filtered and we use only chlorine would that be ok?

[NickJames]

In general, it’s problem fine if it’s just like 2-4ppm chlorine water. But…

My gravity-driven automatic overflow pipe outfalls literally into the rootball of one of my livistona rigida. I don’t like anything automatic as I prefer to stockpile the water during dry season (why dump out the excess if it’s not going to rain for a month?) so I actually have it capped off since day 1.

instead, I manually remove water when it’s approaching the coping using the attached hose Bibb on my pump. I run a garden hose out to the front lawn (over my septic field where I have only Bahia and weeds) and drain there. I’m on a sandhill scrub so apart from hurricane Ian, I can’t hold water on my lot so I don’t worry about flooding my drainfield and the Bahia is tolerant of the salt content  

During Hurricane Ian, with 23 inches of rain, I had a cheap sump pump that I tossed into the pool as additional pumping capacity. This allowed me to essentially keep the pool level despite literally 23 inches of rain falling in. I was extremely concerned that the pool would overflow and send a deluge of saltwater into the surrounding new landscaping! 
 

just some food for thought if you have the potential for an alternative drain solution that could give you peace of mind. 

[sonoranfans]

If the well water is not hard it should be fine.  Hardness is not just a city water thing, many wells have hard water depending on where you live Zpalm.

[Merlyn]

Yeah my well water is super high in Calcium, Manganese, Sulfur, and Iron.  The Manganese and Iron are only minor annoyances for water stains and manganese bacteria colonizing the water lines...but the sulfur is another thing entirely.  I had a bleach injection pump installed with a big retention/settling tank to precipitate out the...er...precipitates.  So the resulting water smells very slightly of bleach, but that's a lot better than fart-water!    Anyway, the point of this is that pool bleach *might* precipitate out some of the hardness, depending on what's actually in your water.  Then it just clogs your filters.