Question on pool refill

[yeomanflood]

Hello. Thanks to everyone for their help in this forum.
I put in too much salt and have to do a 1/2 drain and refill.
I have a Letro autofill feature.
For the drain I have shut off the valve at the outdoor faucet - tightly.
I noticed that the refill hole for the water is leaking a little. The last time I did a drain/refill I don't think I saw that. I removed the Letro autofill and re-plumber taped it and rescrewed it in. And I'm still seeing that water leak out the hole area. Looking at the Letro, I see that it looks like the water is staying within the letro tube but the water is leaking out of the tube a little ways up from the bottom. I have attached a photo to show it.
Is this normal?
Thanks.

 

[yeomanflood]

Anyone?

 

[Patrick_B]

I don't think it does, but how much do you think it is leaking? Should be easy enough to just replace it.

 

[yeomanflood]

thanks, Patrick.
you can see the the photo it's not that much. But I figure on a daily basis I probably don't notice during swim season cause it's probably just offsetting evaporation/splash. But in the winter - if it's something like 5 or 10 gallons a day - it's not ideal and a waste.
Because the water is coming up the tube a bit then coming out of the Letro towards the bottom - it seems like it might be something other than the Letro. I'm surprised no one has any thoughts on this issue? I can't be the only one who has experienced that?
Thanks, again.

 

[gtemkin]

Don't have a specific solution but read on.

I have a auto-fill that I don't use. I have very little water loss so I'm fine topping off from a hose and I shut off the supply to the auto-fill at my pad.

I can remember when installing it, I had similar difficulty trying to get it to seal. It almost seemed like the thread on the float valve and the thread in the housing weren't compatible (seem to find a lot of those kind of thread issues with various pool items).

I believe the auto-fill uses a short standard toilet float having a straight thread that is normally fed through a toilet tank hole with some sealing washers and tightened in place by a free running nut from the bottom of the tank. In an autofill, there's no access to the "bottom side of the tank" so they mold a tapered thread into the plastic housing and hope that you can tighten the float assembly enough so it seals with no washers. Well......it's hard to get much tightening force on that assembly when it's collection of delicate floats and hinges and jimmy-crack-corn mechanisms with nothing good to grab onto.

I think I got mine sealed with great difficulty by what felt like scary over-tightening; at least what felt like scary tight for my poor ability to grip that un-grippable float assembly.

Maybe there are better auto-fills out there that don't have this issue. It's a shame that any of them have such poor design features.

 

[yeomanflood]

Hey, gtemkin. Thanks a lot for your response.
What you describe makes sense. I think the work around is for me to turn off the water supply during the off-season or whenever I think there isn't a need for an auto-fill. During the summer months the amount of leakage is probably offset by evaporation and splash.
I thought I had tightened it well and then a little more once I saw the leak, but I was concerned about tightening it down any more since I tend to overtighten whenever it concerns plumbing.
It was a little odd cause I thought that water was rising up a little in the auto-fill tube then leaking out, suggesting that the seal there was ok but that there might be an internal seal that wasn't tight. So per the suggestion earlier in this thread I will replace the unit at some point and of course, I probably won't be able to tell if it's working or not unless I drain a bit or wait till there is enough evaporation or something like that. I had even thought that maybe the supply valve was leaking a little and causing some water bleed to the pool....
Thanks, again.