Day to day valve settings

[charlieTX]

Howdy! I recently bought a house with a pool and overflow spa, and have decided to maintain it myself.

I had a few issues with the Solaris pool cleaner, and as a newbie I tried a bit of trial and error but didn't note all the initial settings of the compool valve actuators.

I have two compool valve actuators, each has a setting ON1, ON2 and OFF. They are positioned between the pool and spa return, and the pool main drain / skimmer and the spa main drain.

They rotate 180 degrees. My question is when am running the pool or spa settings, how should these valves be positioned?

I have noticed if I switch between pool and spa main drain to open the spa drain, it literally drains all of the water and leaves me with a dry spa. Could this be due to a low level of water in the pool? I seem to have good pressure and circulation through the pool.

As I see it, I should have water come from main pool drain and return to spa when running spa setting, and when running pool setting I should have water come from pool and return to pool, but I don't see how I can do this?

Confused! Thanks a lot for any advice!

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP!!!

Do you have an automation controller? If so, you should not be needing to mess with the switches on the actuators.

When switching between pool and spa modes, both valves need to turn. There should really never be a reason to turn one without the other ... as you may drain the spa as you discovered or have WAY more overflow than you need if you suck from the pool and return to the spa.

For pool mode, you suck from pool and return to pool. For spa mode, you suck from spa and return to spa (this allows you to only heat the water in the spa). There may be a smaller bypass valve that allows the spa to overflow a little when in normal Pool mode. Likely you only need spa mode when you are actually intending to heat and use the spa.

Your automation "may" switch to spa mode briefly in the day to filter the water in the spa, but most of the time it should be left in Pool mode.

A picture of your equipment pad could help if you want more details about your setup.

 

[charlieTX]

Thanks Jason. Yes I have an automation controller, but I moved one of the valves without thinking about it and have been going back and forth between the equipment and the pool trying to rectify the setting!

Thanks for the quick reply, I've put them back to those settings that make sense!

 

[charlieTX]

The controller switched on to spa mode today and the spa drained very quickly and started sucking air when it was empty... The spa main drain and spa return valves were both open but when the spa was empty I could see there is very little water coming in to the spa, just a trickle, and it is only coming in from one of the ports. So do I have a blockage somewhere? I have good circulation through the pool.....

Thanks!