I was in a bit of a bind when I got the plaster put in because the electrician that was scheduled to come the next day cancelled. It was sort of a mini-emergency because I needed the water flowing for the plaster.
In hindsight, I should have done the electrical before plaster, but I figured this would be ok, except I wasn't counting on a cancellation. Since I was in a bind, I just hopped on craigslist and found someone local who could make it out that same day. Luckily I found someone who seemed to know his stuff, and so I hired him to pull everything and make all the connections.
So everything seemed good, the pump was working and I assumed the rest was ok. After a month, I turned on the swg (saltwater generator), and it wouldn't power up. I checked the fuse, looked good, checked all the connections, looked fine. Couldn't figure out what the **** it was, so I called the pentair tech support number to see if someone there could help me troubleshoot. They weren't much help, the only thing the guy could offer was that it probably wasn't getting power and that I needed to call an authorized service rep. Since I'm a meddling sun of a gun, I figured I'd just read up on it and try and fix it myself.
After reading the specs, I found that the electrician didn't use thick enough wire, he used 16 awg, and it calls for 12-14. He also didn't wire it through the pump like it states. It should be wired through the pump to ensure it only comes on when the pump is on, because otherwise, it'll burn it out if it's running without flow. I'm actually lucky the guy didn't wire it right because otherwise I wouldn't have known that, and would have burned up a 500 dollar unit. So I replaced the wire with a thicker gauge, and junctioned it with the pump. I then said "screw it" and did all the rest of the electrical myself. I was planning on hiring out another electrician to install lights on my rear wall, and run the power out to the bbq area, so instead I just spent the last couple days doing it all myself, which saved me a lot of money I think (those guys are expensive because they know most homeowners are afraid to work with electricity).
It was actually kind of fun since I've never done electrical before, but I used to be a pipefitter, so I worked next to sparky's all day and watched enough to where it really wasn't an issue(at least I hope not lol, hopefully I don't ever find out the hard way). It's just like running irrigation pipe except you've gotta pull wire inside. Mine's actually probably safer than what most electricians would do because I went the extra mile on every part.
Also put in a remote control for the lights so they can change color. You'd figure that the lights would just be able to do that, but the pool industry is smart enough to realize that if they require an external control, that's an extra 200.00 they can make off ya. I did find it for half that price on ebay. Also put up a steel fence across the yard to keep the kids out of the water, just in case the little one ever got outside.
