Hi all, my first post here since actually registering. Really grateful to the community here.

I have a Rheem 406A Propane heater for a 15K gallon inground pool. Everything works totally fine in manual mode. I'm building my own pool controller based on a Raspberry Pi computer, an 8-switch relay, and some cool free software. Here's an example of the kinds of instructions I'm following.

I recently replaced the control board (a raypack 013464). The instructions say that you provide 24VAC on the blue wire, and then a path to common on either the black or the orange and that's how it knows whether you want spa temp, pool temp, or no heat. I've built this with my relays and it delivers what I think is the right electric signal in the right circumstances.

The problem is this: I put the heater into 'remote' mode (hold down temp up/down buttons for a few seconds). I trigger the voltage from my automation system. Nothing happens. I'll see 'remote. no demand' on the display. It never changes. If I take it out of remote mode, and I use the 'mode' button to turn it on/off and set temperatures, it works fine. E.g., putting into spa mode will spark and heat to spa temperature.

I took my electric meter out to measure the voltage at the heater. When I have it on, I see 28.8V AC on the blue/orange path (for example). Then I switch it and I see 28.8 VAC on the blue/black path. Then I turn it off and I see like maybe 1V AC. Interestingly, when I have 28.8 VAC running across one circuit, I seem to have about 10 VDC running on the other. At least that's what I *think* the readings show. (The "AC" on my multimeter disappears, and about 10.1 V appears on the display). That's weird. I don't know if it's an incorrect reading, related to my problem, or just spurious information.

Below is a wiring diagram of how it looks. If relay 7 is active, 24VAC flows from COM to NO ("NO" means normally open). Power then passes via relay 8. Either it goes over the NC (normally closed) path, which is the orange wire for pool temperature, or it flows over the NO path to the black wire, indicating spa temperature. If Relay 7 is off, no power flows at all. This seems like the right wiring. But the heater doesn't respond.

Anybody have ideas what I should try next?

So yesterday out of the blue, my pool pump was not on. I checked the breaker and it was tripped. I reset the breaker and it tripped instantly. The pump is wired to 115v. I removed the 2 wires from the pump and turned the breaker back on and the breaker remained on. I checked the voltage at the wires by the pump and was getting 115v with the voltmeter. Reconnected the wires and turned the breaker back on and it instantly trips. So I’m guessing something is wrong with the pump. The pump is only 3 years old. Any clue on what I could check next before buying a new pump??

I’m pretty sure I will need to replace by pool pump .
I currently have a pool Sta-Rite , Dyn-glas pump??
If I get a variable speed pump will I need an electrician to install it or new electrical work ? I just spend loads of money on electrical for our heater I don’t want to do any more!
I just want to swap out the pump , do I need to buy a certain type to do this?

Seems this is all home depot carrys now, anyone had any experience with it, what ive read is its 20% acid.

Hello everyone, First time posting here regaring our new(er) pool. This pool was built in late 2019- 2020 and has been trouble free until this point. We discovered some black algae a few days ago. From what I am reading, this could be a real beast and the best method is shock / brush until it's gone and possibly replace catridges after it's gone. This is our first encounter with the black algae - our other pools have been vinyl. Looking for advice / direction / suggestions on treatment. My current numbers are below. Need to order a new test kit today and deciding between TFP and Taylor.

FC .63
TC .63
PH 8.2
TA 117
CYA 24
Copper .3
Phospahtes 376
Salt 2300

Hello all! My wife and I signed a contract a few months ago for an 18x36 inground gunite pool. Only issue is they can’t even start until February 2022 due to being completely booked for the year. They’re a very reputable builder, family business for over 40 years and we have friends who had theirs built and they had nothing but good things to say about the process so we’re willing to wait. Plus I’m in a region where there are only a few other options. Below is what we were quoted, anything I should add/remove based on experience?

- Auto cover
- 18x36ft w/ 6ft tanning ledge (12in depth). Shallow end is 3.5ft going to 7ft in the deep end.
- Custom steps w/ bench and 2 hydro jets
- Lifetime structural guarantee
- 48 sq/ft Jandy DEV filter
- 1 HP Jandy stealth energy efficient high performance pump
- Auto chlorinator
- 2 skimmers & 3 floor returns
- 2 8” main drains
- Flagstone coping with custom waterline tile
- Hydrostatic relief valves
- 500 watt light
- White marbelite plaster, hand troweled
- Polaris TR35P pressure cleaner
- Approximately ~2,000 sq/ft of concrete decking, broom finished

It also comes with manual vacuum, hoses, leaf skimmer and pump for the auto cover. Anything stand out as needing an upgrade or unnecessary?

We’re currently in the process of having 1/2 acre of trees removed from the property to make space for the pool, pavilion and eventual detached garage. Now it’s just a waiting game until February, but want to make sure I have everything nailed down before our final design meeting.

Any suggestions?

In your career In the pool industry who have you met who is famous?

I’m trying to program mi Intelliflo3 to run at 35gpm speed continuously, but then ramp up to 50% for 1 hour each day. I built the program shown in the attached picture, but the pump doesn’t ramp up to 50% at 8am as planned. Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?

I’ve watched my salt level keep rising and now IC20 is flashing high salt at 4500. Confirmed with Taylor kit. I have not added any salt since initial fill of the pool 9 months ago to 3600ppm. I do believe our auto refill is with softened water, tested it at 150ppm with Taylor kit. We have almost daily splash out with young kids. I know I have to drain but want to figure out what is happening. My only guess is we live in AZ and the temps have caused excessive evaporation but from other threads thought this is mitigated by splash out, ect. I usually can always find the answers in this forum and am stumped. Thank you!!

Hello all!

I have a feeling my pentair system was never setup right. It’s about 9 months old in the high desert in Morongo valley, CA. I had both a propane heater and electric heat pump installed

- salt intellichlor
- pentair easytouch 2
- pentair 400k btu propane heater
- pentair 140k ultratemp heat pump

Here are my issues:
- heat pump has never really worked at all. It would never heat the pool, and can’t even get the spa to temp. We don’t use it and seems to be a waste of money unless it wasn’t configured correctly.
- the jets in the spa have never worked. Hot water comes in, but no bubbles! I’m wondering if it was configured incorrextly

I’m looking in the ScreenLogic configure app, hoping you can tell me if these settings are wrong!

I am asking for my husband who thinks this is a good idea (and I think it is a terrible idea)... Our pool is CLOSE to needing to be replastered. We are thinking about selling the whole property and hate to put money into real plaster and are afraid the "almost" state of the pool will severely hurt the sale. So he is thinking about a roll on plaster called Sider-Crete. If anyone has heard of it, could you give your opinions on it and on the general idea of a cheap quick do-it-yourself thing like this?

We just setup our Funsicle 10’x30” pool on 6/30. We’ve enjoyed a couple of days over the holiday in the water with out granddaughters. We chose this pool due to the depth - chest high to our nearly 4-year old

Hello

My first official test results with my brand new K-2009:

CYA: 30
FC: 17 (whoops )
TC: 17
CC: 0.0
PH: 7.3
TA: 80
CH (not tested)

Nice to see I didn’t undershoot the LC , but I think I’ll let it air out for a couple of days……..
Quite an eye-opener.

It seems that Im always battling a little bit of algae in my pool, what I call a 5 o'clock shadow! Otherwise the water is clear but I feel that I am needing to brush away algae a little too often. I check my water balance daily and today I went to pool store to confirm my numbers. They are as follows from the pool store and are very close to the numbers I get with my Taylor kit:
FC-4.72.
Total Cl - 4.72.
pH - 7.6.
TA - 105
Calcium - 237
Cyan - 64
Iron - 0.1
Copper - 0.1
Phosphates - 2549
TDS - 900

So clearly the phosphates are high, I have landscaping with plants, mulch, etc within 18" or so from one long edge of the pool and over winter organic matter tends to collect in the cover. Are the phosphates really my problem? I have read in many forums that the phosphates are not such a big deal and dont necessarily need to be addressed. Last year they were in the 1800 range and I did add a bit of fresh water this spring after a power vac to waste. Any advice for me????

My numbers are very good see below. Water is clear as you can see, but I always have algae here. Maybe I'm not brushing enough to break it up. I brush it away about twice a week but after a day it's back in the same spot. Should I be brushing daily until it's gone? Is a SLAM required? Maybe it's because I leave my solar cover on the pool all the time ??? Any thoughts?

FC - 9
CYA - 50
PH -7.5
TA - 40
Salt - 3400

Greeting, first post here. What do you know, it's a problem with pool equipment!

I have a Jandy RS6 and a Zodiac Nature2/Aquapure system.

All has been fine until today. Today the unit's control panel is beeping once every few seconds and occasionally twice. The unit shows up *sometimes* under the "Status" screen in iAqualink (I just clicked a second ago and the info was there, again and it disappeared). Of note, I don't recall setting the system to 16%, but that's what it was on when I was seeing why it was beeping.
Trying to use the "Set Aquapure" menu results in:


Troubleshooting steps so far:
1. Cut breakers, main and individual. Powered back on.
2. Put unit in service mode. Cycled pump on and off.
3. Cycled pump, changed speeds within iAquaLink.
I have not opened the panel yet. I figure I'd scour the manual and make this post since nothing has been touched in the box and this issue started today. All equipment is covered and does not get wet. Not sure if that matters.

Still image of the panel and lights:

I notice the cell reversing light being on. I feel like I've seen this before with no beeping, etc.

Video of the control panel beeping:

I'd appreciate any advice or next steps for troubleshooting.

Pool water is clean and clear. Our SWG is sized too small (IC40 for a 32k pool) so in summer I find myself adding some liquid chlorine here and there, which I'm fine with but lately I feel like the chlorine is having a harder time keeping up. After adding MA and Chlorine (seperate times), water is:
FC 5.0 / CC 0.5
pH 7.5
TA 40
CYA 50

I'm usually battling pH rise, my pool loves to sit at 8/8.2 and as TA has slowly lowered over time, my pH rise has slowed a bit compared to previously when my TA was higher at 70-80. So should I leave it and not add baking soda? And if I leave it for now, at what point do I add baking soda....it's already less than the recommended level for a salt water pool.

As for CYA, I'm assuming I might be going through chlorine a little quicker as my CYA is too low....what would be the ideal # to raise it to, another 10? 20? Or leave it at 50 and keep monitoring? I guess I could add chlorine pucks which helps both the chlorine levels and the CYA...

A friend of mine came over and saw my many jugs of 10% chlorine that I get from Walmart. He told me about a local chemical company that sells to the public in Greenville, SC. They just delivered my 55 gallon drum of 12.5% and a siphon pump for a total of $290. That is about $125 cheaper than buying single gallons
in my area.

If you have chemical companies in your area that sell straight chlorine, it might be worth checking out.

The pump was $25. I can reuse that for the next drum.

I opened the pool around memorial day weekend. Found out my old DE filter was leaking at the dirty water intake. New filter was installed about a week ago. Since pool was open for long time it's been really diety. Lot of algae and leaves at the bottom. As you can see the pics, this is the condition of the water. Lot better than what it was 3 days ago. I even open3d the filter yesterday and hosed down th3 grids. I added around 6 cups of DE to recharge. Now it's doing the same thing. Pressure goes up within hour or tow max. I end up backwashing and start again. Same cycle.
What I started now is stop adding DE after backwashing. I know that's not good for the grids. Chances are higher for grids getting damaged. I also added hair net at both Skimmer baskets to control the gunk getting to the filter. I am following the SLAM process but trying to understand why it's getting clogged so quickly.

My pool is 27,000 gallons, equipment pad is 5+ feet above water level, one Jandy check-valve just before the pump inlet that is supposed to hold the water after the pump shuts off. I lose prime regularly, sometimes it picks up on its own within 1-2 minutes, sometimes not. The whole setup has never works reliably for over 10 years. I know there are multiple ways I could try and improve things (and I have a separate post about tracking down the source of bubbles in the check-valve), but have a specific question about the pool pump.

My pump is a 2HP Jandy single speed. Would a bigger pump recover prime more reliably and quickly? Would it work better even if, say, a small air leak has developed somewhere on the suction side, such as the check valve, causing all suction-side water to drop back to the pool?

How big would be too big for the pump? I don't mind paying extra for a new pump if it will recover lost prime better.

Thank you !!

Hi,
I have a Hayward Tristar VS 900 that was damaged in a hail storm. I have a replacement controller but when I took off the old controller the wire harness came apart and I have no idea which of the 4 wires go to which plug on the controller.
Hayward won't help. Does anyone have this pump and would unscrew the control panel and send me a picture of the wire arrangement? Or just know how to order the wires? I've attached a photo of the underside of the controller and the wires attach to the white display plug with the red connectors.


Thanks,
John

I like to and I am used to a Chlorinator. The convenience of loading up the 3” disks is really nice. I have come to learn that this method increases the CYA too high over time. This website makes it sound like a good solution is liquid chlorine. Am I correct? Can I still use the chlorinator with liquid? Is it as easy to balance the water? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

I have an old Great White that was working fine until it decided to keep rotating. I noticed that the brush would come out and not retract, causing it to go into an endless pivoting.
After replacing gears and disassembling and reassembling everything several times, I gave up.
I bought a used Kreepy Krauly on ebay with an opposite problem: it would just go straight, as the brush would not come out.
I then used the best parts of the two cleaners to make one. I put it together and it worked perfectly... for 2 days.
It started the endless rotating cycle. I swapped a few parts again and sometimes it would work fine for about 10 minutes and then fail again.
I noticed that when the brush is stuck out, if I lift the cleaner a little bit, the brush would retract, what made me wonder if there was too much down pressure, preventing the brush to move. I experimented reducing the flow to the cleaner, to reduce the pressure and the vacuum, but it did not help.
Playing with it out of the pool and with the hood off, I see that if I press the cleaner down, the gears do not have enough "power" to continue moving and get stuck. Therefore, the brush cannot be released to retract.
Any suggestions on how to fix it?
Thank you in advance!

Hello all - Hoping for some advice. I have about a 6 year old Pentair SD80 sand filter. This year, like 3 months ago I paid almost $1k to have a company put in new laterals and 'change' the sand to glass media. Didn't realize until job was 1/2 done that apparently I already had glass media in there instead of sand. Obviously kicking myself but is what it is, job was done. Couple months later the filter started to leak from the seam, some small pinholes that were getting worse. I tried to mend it with some fiberglass patching from the inside and outside, as expected it won't hold so time for a replacement.

I have a replacement Pentair SD 80 coming which has the multiport on top and laterals included. Ideally I want to re-use the glass media I just had put in the old filter. It is about 225 lbs of fine and 75 lbs of coarse and around here will be close to $500 to buy it again.

My 'plan' is to use a wheel cutter to cut a window in the top of the broken filter. I am going to try to put some towels over the glass on the inside through the top opening to attempt to keep the fiberglass / plastic pieces I will be cutting from getting mixed into the glass. Once I have the window cut I plan on scooping out the glass into containers that I can weigh at the end. I am hoping I will be able to keep the coarse and the fine separated by sight when I get towards the bottom.

Ideally, I am hoping that maybe I just have to buy maybe 2 bags of coarse and 1 bag of fine due to waste in my process when filling up the new filter.

Fully realize plans are only good until the first unforeseen issue so figured I would ask to see if anyone has better advice or thinks I am going about this wrong. With the glass being just a few months old I just think that it is worth the effort to re-use it.

Thanks for any advice / opinions,
Gary

I was running out of Taylor R-0001 and R-0002 reagents so I bought some refills. The ones I already have are at least 2 seasons old, probably older. In the summer they sit in a storage box with a lid under the pool deck. In the winter they are stored in my conditioned crawlspace. last week the refills arrived so I decided to run a chlorine test with them. I have a K-2005 kit. The new reagents tested higher levels of chlorine than the old ones did.
pH is at 7.4 - my pool always starts very low in the spring, then doesn't move much once I get the pH up.
Chlorine (old reagent) 5-10
Chlorine (new reagent) 15 or higher

Should I be replacing the reagents every season? I think I have been over-chlorinating the pool.

I have managed to get the iaqualink web interface stuck in the following screen. I think I was trying to program something and closed the webpage without saving what I was doing. So now every time I go into the web interface it displays the below screen and when I click OK, it just looks like it is loading (it displays "waiting for connection") but it never actually loads anything :-( Anyone know how to recover from this?

Yesterday I put a bag of salt and 68 oz of muriatic acid in the pool. Had to drop the TA. Also had the salt cell replaced early afternoon yesterday. FC dropped overnight to 1! I just checked the water coming out of the return - it tested at 3 so the salt cell is producing. I’ve dropped some liquid chlorine in, but have to do a Leslie’s run st 9am and am superchlroninating right now.

CC tested clear. Any idea what could have caused the FC to drop so drastically? Only two swimmers yesterday, nothing out of ordinary, I test FC daily with Water Guru and a few times a week with my kit. It was normal yesterday when I Taylor’s tested before adding the salt and acid and new cell.