New Construction Plumbing Questions

[BRiggs72]

Greeting from California,

I am contracting my own pool and have plumbing questions. I will list the specs. and if you have any suggestions about pipe size, number of skimmers, number of returns, pump size, anything will help educate me so I will know what to ask the subs that come out to bid the plumbing.

Size 45' X 20'
Depth 3 1/2' down to 8'
Plumbing run length 40'
No water falls or spa.
No main drains (very bad soil most builders here don't use them).
Will be salt water.

Thank you for any help.

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP!!!

Sorry no one had responded yet, although most of our members are just pool owners like yourself with little experience in the design/build area.

Since you will not have floor drains, I would suggest 2 skimmers so that you have multiple suction lines and use at least 2" plumbing from each back to the equipment pad where you can have a 3-way valves adjust the suction. May also be a good idea to have a 3rd line run as a dedicated cleaner line ... up to you if you want it to be for a suction cleaner or a pressure cleaner. Although if you are going with a robot, then there may be no need for the 3rd line.
Make sure one of the skimmers is on the predominantly downwind side of the pool.

On the return side, again use at least 2", likely only need 1 line and split that into a loop for the return jets. Not sure how many you need, but I would think 3-5 would be plenty.

With no water features, you do not need a very big pump likely 1HP is plenty and at least get a 2-speed pump. Since you are in CA and likely have expensive electricity, getting one of the newer smaller VS pumps would be a good idea (especially if you get a rebate). There are 2 from Hayward (SuperPump VS and Max-flo VS) and 1 from Pentair (SuperFlo VS) that I can think of.

For a filter, you want to go big. How big depends on the volume which I roughly guess is around 24k gallons. So I would suggest at least a 350 sqft cartridge, or 28" sand, or 60 sqft DE filter.