How to get water to previously plumbed pipe for slide

[lnmnmns]

Hello everyone.

We bought our house with pool already installed. It did not have a pool slide but looks to have been "plumbed" for a slide. There is a skimmer cover located at the deep end side of our pool that when you take off the cover, you see a 1 1/2" water pipe staring at you. When we look down into the pipe, we see what looks to be a lightweight plastic flap-like cover that can lift up but closes after it's let go. It doesn't stay open on its own. We want to install a slide but don't know how to get the water to come up out of this pipe. We have a paramount floor system that makes the return water go to three wall jets on one side of our pool, then to three other wall jets on other side of pool (this is the side that the slide water pipe is on), then to the three floor returns, separately. We don't know how to get the water to come out of the pipe for the slide. Right now, we don't seem to be "blocking" any water through any of the paramount ports. Don't know if there's a switch or valve somewhere that we don't know about that would activate the pool plumbing.

Any ideas?

 

[JasonLion]

That doesn't really sound like something you could use to get water for the slide. However, it isn't completely clear what it is. Posting a picture might help us figure things out for you.

 

[lnmnmns]

Thank you for your response. This is a pic looking down into the "pit" where the pipe is coming up from. It seems like the slide's plumbing would fit over this spot. The flap-type plug thingy is the white you see at the bottom of the pipe....I've also just added a pic of what it looks like down in the pipe itself.

 

[JasonLion]

That does look like what you want, not at all like what I was expecting.

The next step is to see if you can find a valve that will send water to that pipe, or "the other end" that needs to be plumbed to a water source. Look around your pump/equipment pad area and see if there are any valves that you don't know the function of, or a pipe sticking out of the ground that is not connected to anything.

 

[lnmnmns]

I don't see any pipe that is not connected to anything. However, there is one that is to the left of the SWG in the pic below that is capped off at the top. I don't see how that would work, though. (The open pipe you see to the right of the SWG is just supporting the other "pipeage" to the SWG.) The top pic is just a view of pool equipment from the front. The red levers are for the main drain and two skimmers.

 

[alanpaul]

LNM,
Just some harebrained thoughts:
You mentioned 3-3-3 wall and floor returns. How many pipes are in the distribution multi valve?
I would guess that one is IN from the Pump/Filter Chlorinator.
Possibly 3 more to the wall and floor returns.
Is there a 5th pipe?
If so, I'd wonder if that's the one to your mystery pipe. And maybe it's capped under the valve lid.

Otherwise, maybe you might carefully clear away the stones in the vicinity of the SWG and the distribution valve, and see if there's a capped-off pipe buried in that area.

BTW, can you tell if the mystery pipe continues beyond the flapper? Can you try using a plumber's snake? After that, perhaps a mini-camera snake can tell you where that pipe goes....

That's all I've got.

PS. I've never seen pool plumbing with little stubs everywhere. Interesting.

I hope you find your water-slide pipe.

 

[lnmnmns]

Re: the paramount system, it has 6 ports/valves that send water back to the pool. Two of these ports go to one side of the pool for 3 wall returns, another goes to the other side of the pool for those 3 wall returns and the other 3 ports are for 3 separate floor heads that return water. We took the paramount lid off and figured those positions out by trial and error. We, too, thought that the sixth port had to go to the slide but it doesn't. That would make too much sense, right?

I guess we'll keep digging around in that area and see if we can find anything.

Thanks for your ideas!

 

[alanpaul]

Sure, LNM,

But how odd that 3 wall ports use 1 pipe, and the other 3 wall ports use 2 pipes.
That's in the category of Things that make you go, "Hmmm."

Maybe one of those 2 pipes was diverted...?

My current thought, backed up by absolutely no experience in waterslide engineering, is that perhaps 1/6 of the water and pressure was never sufficient to get to the top of the slide, from Day 1.

So maybe the original owners just decided to forgo the slide idea entirely, and tied the 6th return line to the wall return line.

OR, having decided they didn't want the slide any more, they then tied the 2 return lines together.

Don't know, can't say, just positing ideas.

If it had been my yard, and if I was going to tie 2 existing return lines together, I'd do it near the paramount valve. If it really was ever plumbed for a slide. And that's a lot of ifs.

Good luck on your detective work!