Hey guys and gals,
I had the local pool guys close our pool today and stuck around to watch them in hopes of saving myself a couple hundred bucks every year by closing it myself. It looks really easy with the right equipment. I think I can handle everything they did on my own with the right equipment. One vital piece of equipment they had that I have never seen is a converter from their blower to the strainer basket on the pool pump. The blower hose was hooked to a square Hayward strainer door type converter and they simply replaced my strainer door with the one that had the hosed attached and blew it out. Has anyone ever seen this piece of equipment? It looked like it was made for this application, ie not something someone rednecked together. Where can I purchase on of these doors? They were using a mighty vac pump, but I can't find anyone who sells the mighty vac also selling this strainer door converter. Let me know if you have seen this thing and were I might be able to sniff one up.

Thanks,
MonkeyLove

Can't help you with the lid gizmo, but you can accomplish the same thing by hooking up a blower/compressor to one of the drain plug ports on the bottom of the pump. Just use a nipple of the correct size, screw it into the hole where the plug goes, and attach it to a compressor set to about 20 psi. Set the multiport to recirculate, and the system will start blowing air just like the mighty vac set up. As each return/suction starts to blow, screw in a plug. On the last one, plug it up and put the multiport on backwash so the filter doesnt build up to much pressure.

Is that what the pool company did, basically?

From what you are describing it's the same thing that we use, we have a barrel full lids with holes in them. I forget whether we bought any or not, but recently we just made out own. You take a used lid and drill a 1 1/2 inch hole in the middle and then use above ground return fitting to make it airtight and then screw in a 1 1/2 inch male x barbed fitting and that's what you stick the blower on. I'll take a picture tomorrow and post it just to make sure we are on the same page.

Yes that is basically how they blew out all the lines. I would be interested in seeing a picture of the lid you made, maybe theirs was homemade and I just couldn't tell, but it sure worked slick. Thanks for your help everyone, I am determined to not spend anymore money having the pool company close each year.

Thanks again.

MonkeyLove

Is this the device you were talking about?

Yes,
That looks very much like what they had. Is this something you made?

Sorry it took me so long to answer you back, thanks for sending the picture.

Monkeylove