Hey Nate - A couple of questions/comments:
- You mention an Intellicenter and Easytouch 8. Those are 2 different automation systems, you do not need both. If you have both I would keep the Intellicenter and take back the ET.
- You have a skimmer in your spa? Its not a bad idea, just not the norm. Would the skimmer only run in spa mode? I would think you would want it to skim in pool mode since that will be 99% of the time.
- Does your spa only have 2 returns (North and South)?
- Your Spa waterfall is on the same side of the 3 way actuator as your spa returns. You typically want the spa waterfall to run in pool mode, otherwise you will be dumping all of your hot water into the pool. You also want to make sure you run the spa waterfall each day so that your spa receives freshly chlorinated water.
- Are your Baja Returns bubblers? If so, you may want to use a regular valve to be able to fine tune the output
- You have a lot of Ball Valves listed. Ball Valves are much more prone to failure and I would suggest using Jandy Neverlube style valves instead.
- I count 8 actuators on your design. Have you confirmed this will work with your automation system? I believe the Intellicenter can only control 4 actuators without adding on to the Intellicenter.
I initially bought an Easytouch 8 for the built in service panel, then purchased the upgrade to the Intellicenter.
The spa is designed to be a standalone body of water, thus the skimmer. This is for quick heating up of the spa. Yes, that spa skimmer would only run in spa mode. I do plan on having an automated schedule that circulates both the spa water and the pool water independently at different times. However, I've also built in a small spillway from the spa into the pool if I want to run with a combined water system (which we'll likely do when we're out of town for the summer, to simplify water chemistry while we're gone).
The Baja shelf is a full lenth of the pool shelf and the returns are designed to help circulate that water back into the pool (they're not bubblers).
On all the ball valves, I'm not planning on them being adjusted very much except for the initial dialing in of everything. I'm thinking that being able to control flow for each individual plumbing line with a ball valve as opposed to only a jandy valve would be the most flexible, then the jandy/activator is just an off/on control. I'm not really sure if the jandy valve actuators can be programmed to control how much flow goes through the valve or if they are just on/off... never having configured this kind of thing before. If they are fully programmable, then I guess I wouldn't need the ball valves.
Any input on that issue?
The spa has three trunk lines (North, South, and Therapy). Each trunk line has 3 jets, I'm planning on just the North/South lines (6 jets total) for general circulation and spa use, with the Therapy jets as an additional spa setting.
On the actuators, I've also purchased the Pentair expansion module so I can handle the extra valves.
Thanks for you feedback, JJ_Tex!
