Help me with my plumbing of a pool cooler

[beezar]

Ok, so I got this Glacier Pool Cooler thing to help cool my pool water. I had a pool guy install it as I have zero plumbing/electrical experience. He attached the intake to the pool cooler to the former intake of a Polaris booster pump. Apparently the water flows from the pump, through the filter to the main return line, through the SWG, then underground where ~20% splits off to the Pool cooler, and the other 80% return to the pool. The intake from the pool cooler then get cooled and returns to a T in the skimmer return line right before the pump.

The problem is that I have to maintain very high flows on my Intelliflo VF pump to get any sort of decent flow to the Pool Cooler, and it doesn't cool very much because the flows need to be even higher.

Questions:
1) Is there a better way to replumb this to get higher flows to the cooler? The cooler has a ball valve to control how much intake it gets, and it currently is wide open.

2) If I can get a higher percentage of flow diverted to the cooler rather than the pool, what kind of consequences may occur, other than I may have to run my pump longer to get a full turnover?

3) Is it bad for water to recirculate through the SWG a few times before it goes back to the pool?

Thanks for any sort of input anyoneo can provide me!

 

[tgmb]

Why are you cooling your pool? In mid summer I have to heat mine...

 

[Shane1]

Why are you cooling your pool? In mid summer I have to heat mine...

LUCKY!

How much cooling are you getting as it is right now? THere are some really good posts on this site about cooling and how much to expect according to your weather.
Here in AZ I can keep mine right about 90* with just aeration but its not very humid here which makes a difference. Hopefully one of the gurus will chime in and answer your questions.

 

[beezar]

Why are you cooling your pool? In mid summer I have to heat mine...

Nope, here in Texas we've had 100+ degree weather for the past few weeks, and the pool is like 93-94 degrees and feels like bath water. Not at all refreshing.

How much cooling are you getting as it is right now? THere are some really good posts on this site about cooling and how much to expect according to your weather.
Here in AZ I can keep mine right about 90* with just aeration but its not very humid here which makes a difference. Hopefully one of the gurus will chime in and answer your questions.

I'm getting about 4 degrees of cooling which is great, but that's with running my pump at high speeds (50+gpm) for 10+ hours a night. I want to make it a bit more efficient. I don't expect the 10-12 degrees of cooling they advertise for the cooler, but 6 degrees would be nice and not using too much energy.

 

[JasonLion]

Your plumbing setup is basically alright, though the cooler should be taking water from before the SWG. Booster pumps should also be taking water from before the SWG. Is it possible that you have misinterpreted something and the cooler actually draws from before the SWG? If the split is underground, is it possible it is somewhere other than where you think it is underground? Taking water from after the SWG isn't the end of the world, but it will reduce the lifetime of the cooler a little.

The Glacier coolers are not designed to take the full water flow from the pump, but you could add a three way valve to give you more control over how much water goes to the cooler. To do that you will need to locate the exact spot where the cooler line taps off of the main return line. If that is underground that means digging it up. Adding a valve to give you more control will be especially useful when running the pump on low speed, so you can send more of the water to the cooler to make up for the reduced flow rate.

 

[beezar]

Your plumbing setup is basically alright, though the cooler should be taking water from before the SWG. Booster pumps should also be taking water from before the SWG. Is it possible that you have misinterpreted something and the cooler actually draws from before the SWG? If the split is underground, is it possible it is somewhere other than where you think it is underground? Taking water from after the SWG isn't the end of the world, but it will reduce the lifetime of the cooler a little.

The Glacier coolers are not designed to take the full water flow from the pump, but you could add a three way valve to give you more control over how much water goes to the cooler. To do that you will need to locate the exact spot where the cooler line taps off of the main return line. If that is underground that means digging it up. Adding a valve to give you more control will be especially useful when running the pump on low speed, so you can send more of the water to the cooler to make up for the reduced flow rate.

Thanks for the insight. I installed the SWG many years after the pool was built, and looking at it again, there is only one line that goes underground after the pump, so the split to the booster pump probably is underground after the return line goes underground. I have the option of not using the booster pump line and splitting the cooler intake line off of an above ground line before the SWG, but the person who installed the pump as well as Glacier both said that it should be after the SWG so that when I split off flow to the cooler from the line, there would still be enough flow to trip the SWG and turn it on.

How much do you think plumbing it after the SWG would reduce the cooler life? I know it's hard to say, but just wanted a ballpark figure...

The installer did install a ball-valve on the cooler intake line which gives me some control of the intake to the cooler, but I heard those break pretty commonly.