Raised Spa Leaking Water

[Flamingo Bay]

Hello Everyone,

We recently moved to a house that comes with a pool-spa combo. We had a pool before but not a spa so I'm still trying to figure the spa part out.

Usually when the filtering pump is on during the daily routine, the raised spa with over-spill into the pool through a little waterfall. One day this past week, I noticed that the waterfall stopped. Thought it was the pool level low so I filled the pool higher but that didn't do anything. Then I realized the spa water level has been gradually decreasing since then, probably 2 inches over past few days. I can't tell if pump on/off makes a difference because the water level dropingp is happening slow. I don't even know if it's not leaking but rather than no filling combined with evaporation.

We also tried to turn on the spa jets and found that the jets were very weak. I couldn't tell if the pool returns are weaker or not since I had them at relatively low speed to start with for filtration. But I do notice some tiny bubbles coming out from the pool returns. And the main pump doesn't seem to be fully primed.

This pool has a Kreepy Klear chlorination system. We don't use it at all since I dump liquid chlorine into my pool like many people here on this forum . The service light came on in the wall unit. We also see big time bubbling from its outlet in the pool.

So here are my questions that hopefully the helpful folks on the forum will help out with:

* Any idea what is going on with the spa? My research on the subject returns with many suggesting check valve could be the culprit. But it seems that the others' water dropping is much more rapid than my situation. And honestly I don't know which valve is check valve so if anyone can educate me on that, I'd really appreciate it. I'm including a picture of my equipment pad in the post.

* I was wondering if that Kreepy Klear has anything to do with it. Disregard if it does or not, since we are not using it at all and it seems that it's an outdated system, what should we do about it? We turned the unit on the wall to off position, but it seems the water still going into that pool outlet. Can we leverage this to do something more useful? Or can we somehow totally shut this thing down like it's not there if this is what's causing the spa problem?

* In the picture attached, the left side half seen box is the heater. There is a booster pump to its left kind of hidden behind some pipes. Then it's filter and the main pump to the right. There are quite a few valves - the horizontal one on the left is an actuator. I don't really know what each valve is for. If anybody could explain how the plumbing works here for my education, it'll be great.

Thank you all in advance!

 

[Jimrahbe]

Flamingo,

Well, from your picture I can't tell exactly what each valve does, I try to point you in the right direction...

I suspect that the problem with your spa is that you are not feeding it any water.. without water going in, it will eventually run dry.

The two valves with the actuators are.. Intake valve on the right going to the pump. It appears to me that the Spa is currently off. The valve on the left is the Return valve and it appears to have the Spa shut off.

These two electrically controlled valves are controlled by some type of automation system. A picture of that automation would be nice.

There are three basic automation modes:

1. Pool Mode. The pump takes water from your Pool through the Intake valve, and pushes it through the filter and heater and back through the Return valve to your Pool. This appears to me is how your pool is currently set up.
2. Spa Mode. The pump takes water from your Spa through the Intake valve, and pushes it through the filter and heater and back through the Return valve to your Spa.
3. Spillover Mode. The pump takes water from your Pool through the Intake valve, and pushes it through the filter and heater and back through the Return valve to your Spa. This is what causes the Spa to spillover into the pool.

I suspect someone screwed with the button in the automation system and has set the system to Pool mode...

Please let us know what you find.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[gary300]

Flamingo,

This is just a shot in the dark, but from your photo it appears that the actuator on the intake side (going to your pump) is not placing the Jandy valve in a true parallel position with respect to the intake pipes from the spa and pool. This may be just the angle of the photo, since it is not looking straight down on the valve. The Jandy valves do not have very much tolerance as far as the valve positioning goes because the internal flap in the valve is not much bigger than the port inside the valve is. Just a little mis-alignment may cause the valve to draw water from the spa and send it to the pool when supposedly the valve is in the POOL position.

This happened to me once, and I had the check valve replaced (which turned out to be OK) before I noticed that my actuator was not turning the Jandy valve to the full parallel (or perpendicular depending upon the application) that is needed to insure the internal flap in the Jandy valve was covering the port completely.

The fix is pretty simple. There are a set of cams inside the actuator that can be adjusted to control the stop points of the rotation. Pull off the top cover and loosen the nut on top of the stack of cams and you can adjust them individually. An internal micro switch for each cam stops the rotation.

Hope this helps you.

Gary

 

[Flamingo Bay]

Thank you both!! I'll check on all items mentioned tonight and post what I found.

 

[JoelFitz]

The check valves you have are Ortega checks. They have gray bodies and a threaded on cap. It appears you have 2, one on the spa return line..... weird, and the other just out of the picture on the pool return side. I believe your problem is there. Probably just needs the diverter replaced. You can unscrew the cap (with the pump off unless you're really hot) and you should see a spring as well as a removable diverter. I believe you can take the parts to a Leslies and get the replacements.

 

[Flamingo Bay]

Okay, I couldn't get to look at my system in detail until today. It's just getting dark too early nowadays after work. Still haven't made it to take off the check valve to check yet. But I did check the actuators and the handles seem exactly horizontal to me so I will leave that on the back burner for now. I took a look at the automation system. We don't have spa spill mode. It's pool, spa,spa drain, and spa fill. And the overall setting is on auto, so you can't really manually change the mode at all unless you turn off auto, which I don't ever recall we did.

We also notice that the water seems really low in the main pump's basket. It's not fully primed. So the plan for tomorrow is to check the check valves and then manually primed the pool. Will report the findings. If you have any thoughts, please share . Thanks as always!

 

[Steve H]

FB, I have also had problems with our spa self draining, the check valve and spring had both gone bad, in replacing the parts I just today got the spa to stop self draining, in the front left center of your pic there is a removable cap, behind that cap cap should be your check valve and spring for your spa, replace both the valve and the spring and this will help in getting your problem solved.