My plumbing plan. Comments welcome.

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M

mlawrence17

0
Aug 3, 2010
81
Charleston, South Carolina
Here's my plumbing plan for our pool. I welcome any constructive comments you may have. One question I have is why does my return line start out 2 1/2" then at the first "tee" drop down to 2" and finally change to 1 1/2 when it enters the pool? Is that standard?

Also those are three bubblers. The plan lists them as fountain lines.

Pool info:
Charleston, SC
16' x 36'
19,000 gallons
Pentair Intelliflo 3HP
Pentair Cartridge filter
Savi Melody lights

[attachment=0:1ubq2owt]plumbing.pdf[/attachment:1ubq2owt]
 
I think it would be better if the returns were all in a loop and the same size pipe throughout which 2" is great. The method they use with diminishing pipe is probably to try to get some kind of equal flow balance but it probably won't work - especially with it T-ing off right at the beginning.

The step down to 1 1/2" at the walls is for the return fittings and that's normal.

The suction sides look good with the individual runs. It would be interesting to see how they're going to order the valves. Possibly a 3-way valve between the skimmers, to another 3-way between the main drain and the skimmers and finally another 3-way between the cleaner and the main drain/skimmer stack and you're finally at the pump? (I've seen similar setups but with just a single skimmer so I added another valve between those). I guess you could also valve them all individually to a single suction manifold off the pump? But that would limit your automation options, or at least require more actuators. Someone more experienced will come along and advise you on this I'm sure.

On the return side a 3-way valve between the normal returns and the bubblers. Is there a need to individually pipe the bubblers? If not then put those on a single run also looped. Then again, ball valves and the extra pvc are not much $ so give them individual ball valves to fine tune each one.
 
Following your circle, I will refer to the returns in the number order they appear, i.e. #1 is the bottom right, #2 is the bottom middle, etc...

#1 is fine.
#2 is where a pool sweep line is normally and that is usually a direct line to the equipment pad and it should be 1.5"
#3 is fine
#4 should be on the left wall near the top of the pic
#5 is fine

There is no need nor, hydraulically speaking, any need for more circulation return inlets.

Scott
 
Based on my own experience I found that skimmers capture more debris when there is a return opposite the skimmer pointed directly at the skimmer. I have two skimmers and for one of them, I have a return pointed directly at the skimmer and for the other, water passes by in front of the skimmer and the one with the return pointed directly at the skimmer always collects more debris by a lot.

In the original schematic in the first post, the diagram shows one return opposite one of the skimmers but not the other skimmer. So I would add a return where Scott suggested in the upper left but leave the return in front of the left skimmer. Also, add a return in front of the right skimmer as well but I would move the return that is between the two skimmers to half way between the two skimmers. Also, with now 7 returns, I would 3/4" eyeballs to give you a bit more force out of the returns. If you plan on have a two speed/VS pump, then you might even want to down size to 1/2" eyeballs so the water velocity is even higher on lower speeds.

As for the pipe feeding those returns, it is best to keep it as large as possible for the entire run. If you want better equalization, you can create a big loop around the entire pool but this is not always possible so the next best thing is to use as large a pipe as possible to every return.

Also, the original schematic shows a dedicated 2" cleaner line so I think that is fine to leave it as is.
 
There seems to be a little confusion with the cleaner line, so I'm going to post my plumbing plan as a jpeg so it doesn't have to be downloaded. There is a dedicated cleaning line where Scott recommended.
Scott, I'm cool with putting a return in the upper left where scott recommended. That would be in a step, on my tanning ledge. Approx 10" deep is that ok?
 

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