Background
Bought a new house in late February with a pool. It's ~24k gallons (napkin math) bean shape in ground. One skimmer basket and a main drain, single speed pump, no way of controlling the flow between the main drain and skimmer that we can tell. My wife and I travel a lot in the summer so we kept the pool service the last owners had with the intentions of taking over maintenance this fall.
What happened
Last week we were out of town. Pool cleaner finds our skimmer basket is broken, leaves it on our patio, doesn't tell us or turn off our the pump. Leaves the basket weight in the skimmer well, this blocks the intake port and pump runs its schedule like this for at least a few days.
When we get home we find what the pool guy has done. The pump is overheating and powering off, the filter pressure is ~8 PSI and the norm was like 20-30 before. From everything I read online 20-30 is actually too high, but that's what the pool guy said was normal so I have no idea if that was even a good thing. It looks like the main drain is clogged. Water flow into the pool is really good despite all this.
What We've Tried
We replaced the skimmer basket ASAP and popped the cover off the main drain at the bottom of the pool and cleaned around it. We tried a bladder jet from the pump side while holding something over the skimmer intake & it forced the skimmer intake open. We tried a bladder jet by the skimmer intake while holding something over the pump side and it forced it open. We tried a bladder jet from the main drain and it popped the bladder jet out and got no where. I ran an auger into the main drain from the bottom of the pool. It got a long ways until it hit an elbow, but didn't seem to have any clogs. The direction of the main drain is directly towards both the skimmer basket and the pump pad. The length the auger went into the main drain seemed to be a few feet longer than the length to the skimmer basket, but not long enough to get to the pump pad. given how roughly we measured this, I think there is a possibility the closed port in the skimmer basket could be the main drain itself and I'm just completely off in thinking the main drain actually worked. Cleaned the filter twice just to be sure. Not sure what to do next, wondering if the pump is just on its way out.
Extras
Also not having a diverter or valves to control the flow is making this relatively difficult at times. If anyone has recommendations or experience in dealing with things like this without those useful things I'm all ears.
Any thoughts from this community would be greatly appreciated, I'm relatively new to this and being a new home owner and generally a fast learner, I'm trying to handle it the best I can before calling in the professionals. I'm beginning not to trust service people with some of the poor work I've found and having some contractors try to squeeze us for things we don't need, so unless it requires electrical work I'm uncomfortable with, I'm mostly willing to do it on my own. I've generally seen what goes into replacing the pump, and our current pump isn't even bonded, so I'm pretty sure I can replace it on my own and it'd end up safer than it is right now...
If you made it this far, I really appreciate your time. I've put in hours reading online, so if I missed some post that goes over things I should be doing I apologize in advance, I just couldn't find it.
Bought a new house in late February with a pool. It's ~24k gallons (napkin math) bean shape in ground. One skimmer basket and a main drain, single speed pump, no way of controlling the flow between the main drain and skimmer that we can tell. My wife and I travel a lot in the summer so we kept the pool service the last owners had with the intentions of taking over maintenance this fall.
What happened
Last week we were out of town. Pool cleaner finds our skimmer basket is broken, leaves it on our patio, doesn't tell us or turn off our the pump. Leaves the basket weight in the skimmer well, this blocks the intake port and pump runs its schedule like this for at least a few days.
When we get home we find what the pool guy has done. The pump is overheating and powering off, the filter pressure is ~8 PSI and the norm was like 20-30 before. From everything I read online 20-30 is actually too high, but that's what the pool guy said was normal so I have no idea if that was even a good thing. It looks like the main drain is clogged. Water flow into the pool is really good despite all this.
What We've Tried
We replaced the skimmer basket ASAP and popped the cover off the main drain at the bottom of the pool and cleaned around it. We tried a bladder jet from the pump side while holding something over the skimmer intake & it forced the skimmer intake open. We tried a bladder jet by the skimmer intake while holding something over the pump side and it forced it open. We tried a bladder jet from the main drain and it popped the bladder jet out and got no where. I ran an auger into the main drain from the bottom of the pool. It got a long ways until it hit an elbow, but didn't seem to have any clogs. The direction of the main drain is directly towards both the skimmer basket and the pump pad. The length the auger went into the main drain seemed to be a few feet longer than the length to the skimmer basket, but not long enough to get to the pump pad. given how roughly we measured this, I think there is a possibility the closed port in the skimmer basket could be the main drain itself and I'm just completely off in thinking the main drain actually worked. Cleaned the filter twice just to be sure. Not sure what to do next, wondering if the pump is just on its way out.
Extras
Also not having a diverter or valves to control the flow is making this relatively difficult at times. If anyone has recommendations or experience in dealing with things like this without those useful things I'm all ears.
Any thoughts from this community would be greatly appreciated, I'm relatively new to this and being a new home owner and generally a fast learner, I'm trying to handle it the best I can before calling in the professionals. I'm beginning not to trust service people with some of the poor work I've found and having some contractors try to squeeze us for things we don't need, so unless it requires electrical work I'm uncomfortable with, I'm mostly willing to do it on my own. I've generally seen what goes into replacing the pump, and our current pump isn't even bonded, so I'm pretty sure I can replace it on my own and it'd end up safer than it is right now...
If you made it this far, I really appreciate your time. I've put in hours reading online, so if I missed some post that goes over things I should be doing I apologize in advance, I just couldn't find it.
Attachments
Last edited by a moderator:
