This is my 5th year opening up here in the NE and it went decently smooth, but still have one doubt.

The pressure gauge says 4 PSI when the pump is on. Usually its around 13 psi at the beginning of the season and around 17 when the filter is dirty. This is for a 60 sq ft DE filter. Anyone know if 4 PSI could be normal at all? There a couple of known issues for my setup.
1. I have a weird separation tank setup. In the past if that is not properly plugged, I will have air in the system and I will see "sparkles" (bubbles) on the returns when the system is on, and when the system is off, DE will leak into the pool. I just filled the system with DE and forgot to check if DE is leaking into the pool. Another symptom of that issue is that the pressure will be very weird and fluctuate a lot. Now that I am writing about it, maybe that's the issue and I was just fooled that it was a steady 4 PSI.
2. My pressure gauge is really old. I bought a new one a couple of years ago just to have something new looking and it broke just unscrewing it. It seems like the new ones arent as sturdy as my old one. So I went back to the old one. Anyhow, I have another new one as a backup, and I will give that a try.

Here the full story on my opening this year.
I was targeting May 1st as my usual opening day and it seemed like good time since overnight temps were beginning to creep above 50F. I started by vacuuming to waste a week before May 1st. I always get a ton of leafs, worms and dirt, so I start with a vacuum to waste. Interestingly, I didn't see a single worm this year, as opposed to hundreds every other year. Unfortunately, we didn't get much water this winter, so vacuuming ended up removing too much water from the pool since it wasn't filled to the brim as usual. Luckily the weather turned cold and it gave me another week to wait for the spring rain. The rain didn't come and so I had to add water to the pool in spring, which I think is such a waste during what is usually rainy season. During this time, I lubed up all the rubber gaskets, except the pump lid. That has also leaked air in the past, so I may have to do that again. Some other stuff came up like running out of DE, so I had to delay another week.

I wanted to open last weekend, but I didn't realize I ran out of DE, so that took a few days to resolve itself. In the meantime I had a big scare. After realizing I didn't have enough DE, I forgot to turn off the power to the pump clock. So the next day the pump turned on while I was at work with what would of been too little water in the pool. Luckily, spring came that night and dumped a lot of water on the pool. So my pump was saved. And yes, I added water to the pool days before for no reason :/ Another mess up was that I added 1 cup of DE just to see if the system was working well and I had the pollen sock cover on the skimmer basket. Turns out that does not let any DE filter through and the DE blocked water from getting to the pump. Lesson learned.

During this time period, I have put in my pool robot like 3 times and each time it comes back half filled with dirt and leaves. That seems a little worrisome, I guess I didn't vacuum that well this year. I do have a a healing arm injury, so vacuuming wasn't done that well. Oh I also keep the cover on during this whole process and only remove the edge I'm working on, so I don't have much visibility onto whether I am just shoving most of the debris to other side as I go along. I keep the cover on because during spring the pollen is nuts and the cover keeps it out. I also feel like I need to add less chlorine as the sun is blocked. No one is getting into the pool until next month, so the only problem is when I vacuum.

So today I ended up finishing the opening, except for one return. I have three returns, with one of them being a water feature with a separate turn off valve. I didn't unplug that return as I didn't have time. Hopefully that doesn't affect the system too much. As far as chemicals, Ive had a floating chlorinator with pool pucks since around march time. I know this forum is against chlorine pucks, but its needed in my case. Interestingly, when I first inherited the pool, I couldn't get the CYA below 140 for a year or two. Since those first couple of season I've been struggling to get the CYA above 20. I'm not sure how to explain it, other than we got wet winters and wet springs, and I usually end up pumping out water 2 or 3 times before opening. I guess its possible, I recycle up to 50% of the water each season. The only issue with that theory is that the CYA drops to 0, so it would have to reason that CYA always floats to the top after every time I remove water. Otherwise, recycling 50% of the water should mean CYA drops by half from one season to the next? No idea. But I do know that I was traumatized by having around 140 CYA for a couple of seasons and have been very passive about adding CYA. This year, I am going to be more aggressive about it. So I am keeping the floating chlorinator pucks and adding CYA sock fulls to the skimmer. Watch this backfire on me with the dryer winter/spring wave had this year :/

I've also dumped three gallons of liquid chlorine from last season over the past couple of weeks. From experience, I know the strength of these has probably been halved, so I'm not even going to rely on them other then as a backup for the chlorine pucks. I am kind of late in opening, since it warmed up a bit the last week or so, but the pool looks clear. I guess I will find out later in the season if I have to backwash earlier than usual.

One improvement for next year might be to wait a bit longer to put in DE. Its apparent I have air leakage issues and I should work those out before adding DE. I always end up rushing it and then all the DE gets dumped into the pool. Just realized this year, that I can just run the pump without DE. Just need to make sure I have a "sock" filter on the skimmer and I think the DE filter just not get very dirty before adding the DE.
I may also want to completely remove the cover when I vacuum the first time. Its a lot of work, but may save me some work in the long term. I also wonder if when I vacuum to waste, I should just route the waste hose into the pool. The dirt will go back into the pool, but the leafs and big debris will caught by pump basket. That will be the first pass and I will lose no water. I can then wait a couple of days for debris to settle on pool floor and do a second pass to remove the dirt and some water to the street.

Anyone here in the past purchased a intelliflo3 pump from a online authorized pentair dealer and got it professionally installed locally, does that quality for the 3 year warranty, or need to be purchased locally and installed both?
Thanks

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