I'm a first time pool owner and I'm ready to do my first opening this season. After reading lots of posts on this forum, I want to hard plumb my pool. Its a small 15 X 54 above ground pool and it ran fine after it was initally installed last summer. It came with a 1.5 hp Roaring River pump and cheap flexible hosing. From what I've read here, this is a junk pump. I'm afraid that it and/or the flimsy hosing will fail so I want to replace it with something more reliable. From my understanding, 2 in PVC is the way to go, but what would be a good size and make for a pump replacement? Also, the original configuration was with a long cartridge filter on the side of the pool. Are the sand type filters better than what was installed initially on our pool?Thank you all for the great tips and advice that you freely post here!!!!