Hello, I purchased a home in northern California that has an in-ground pool/spa combo. I've been reading through a lot of the info on maintenance of chemistry and think i have a decent understanding of what i need to do, but i have a couple of questions.
First, how do i determine the size/gallons of my pool? I thought i heard the pool inspector mention approximately 20,000 gallons, but how can i get an accurate number?
Second, (forgive my lack of terminology), both the pool and spa have a drain at the bottom (the pool also has a skimmer), and jets where the water returns. For normal filtering on a daily basis, how should i have my valves turned? In other words, should i only be filtering the water out of the pool and then returning to both pool and hot tub (so that hot tub overflows into pool)? I realize that when i'm using the hot tub, i'd have only the hot tub filtering and returning to the hot tub only. But what about every day use? The prior owner didn't know anything about his pool but he told me that he liked to have 100% of the water being filtered from the pool and then roughly 60% back to pool at 40% to spa.
That is all for now! I am waiting for my test kit so i can see where my chemistry levels are and go from there. Thank you in advance!
First, how do i determine the size/gallons of my pool? I thought i heard the pool inspector mention approximately 20,000 gallons, but how can i get an accurate number?
Second, (forgive my lack of terminology), both the pool and spa have a drain at the bottom (the pool also has a skimmer), and jets where the water returns. For normal filtering on a daily basis, how should i have my valves turned? In other words, should i only be filtering the water out of the pool and then returning to both pool and hot tub (so that hot tub overflows into pool)? I realize that when i'm using the hot tub, i'd have only the hot tub filtering and returning to the hot tub only. But what about every day use? The prior owner didn't know anything about his pool but he told me that he liked to have 100% of the water being filtered from the pool and then roughly 60% back to pool at 40% to spa.
That is all for now! I am waiting for my test kit so i can see where my chemistry levels are and go from there. Thank you in advance!
The ratio of water to pool/spa is a personal choice based on water clarity, amount of spillway (aeration) desired, etc. I would tend to agree that on a normal day, you probably want a majority of water return to the pool to enhance the larger body of water's circulation. Some people will manually change that ratio each day for 30 min or so, or some have the variable speed pumps programmed to do that for them. Every pool is different, so you can adjust the flow as you see fit.
