Electrical and Plumbing layout

[Retthood2]

Looking for a sanity check here. My plumbing and electrical layout seems me as though the “technicians” did everything they could to make this footprint as large as possible. No thought went into this whatsoever. Is there any reason why they didn’t take the electrical pvc all the way to the house? Why stop 15” short unless they were just too lazy to run another 90deg bend and dig a little more trench? Same with the plumbing. Zero consideration for trying to save space. I had planned to put a putting green on the side of the house but didn’t expect plumbing to come out 7ft from the wall. Are my expectations too high or does this look like something that needs to be fixed? Thanks for the help!

 

[KevMo]

The plumbing design looks very odd to me, but I am here to see what the experts say. I tend to agree on the electrical conduit as well. I wonder if some of the excess concrete from the house slab was in the way of their trench and they just took the easy way out.

 

[AQUA~HOLICS]

It’s common to run into footings next to structures, heat bending the pipes can help to get closer to the mounting structure.

 

[Jimrahbe]

Ret,

I am not a fan of your plumbing design and not becasue it uses a lot of space. It will just make it impossible to 'fine tune' the flow on each pipe because of the over-use of 3-way valves.

On your suction side you should have one 3-way valve that selects between your Pool and Spa modes Then the remaining inputs (Skimmer, Main Drain, Vac or second skimmer) should all be controlled by an individual 2-way valve on each input pipe.

I have no clue what they are attempting to do on the return side.

I could tell you are from Florida as your filter is "dinky" compared to what is used in other places.

How do you intend to chlorinate your pool?

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Retthood2]

Ret,

I am not a fan of your plumbing design and not becasue it uses a lot of space. It will just make it impossible to 'fine tune' the flow on each pipe because of the over-use of 3-way valves.

On your suction side you should have one 3-way valve that selects between your Pool and Spa modes Then the remaining inputs (Skimmer, Main Drain, Vac or second skimmer) should all be controlled by an individual 2-way valve on each input pipe.

I have no clue what they are attempting to do on the return side.

I could tell you are from Florida as your filter is "dinky" compared to what is used in other places.

How do you intend to chlorinate your pool?

Thanks,

Jim R.

It will be salt water. They just haven’t installed the chlorinator in the system yet. I had to ask the same question. You are correct about being from FL, but do you think the smaller filter will be an issue?

 

[Jimrahbe]

Ret,

In my mind, saltwater is the only way to go.

Is your pool going to be in a screen-room? If so, your current filter will work. In fact, it will work even if your pool is not in a screen-room, it will just need to be cleaned more often.

If you want... show me some better pics of the return side plumbing and tell me what water features you are going to have.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Retthood2]

Ret,

In my mind, saltwater is the only way to go.

Is your pool going to be in a screen-room? If so, your current filter will work. In fact, it will work even if your pool is not in a screen-room, it will just need to be cleaned more often.

If you want... show me some better pics of the return side plumbing and tell me what water features you are going to have.

Thanks,

Jim R.

We have a raised hot tub with 6 jets, a 3ft wide waterfall, a bubbler, and two Pentair magic bowls. All running with a single pump so when spa mode is on, no other water features will work.

 

[Jimrahbe]

Ret,

I doubt you will be able to run all the water features at once, but maybe that was never your plan. But, I have been wrong about 100 times just today..

Once things are up and running, please let us know how it all functions.

Thanks for the pics,

Jim R.

 

[Retthood2]

Not sure if it makes a lot off difference, but it's a 3HP VS pump. I think the bubbler is just air, right? Only water features are the waterfall and two bowls. I assume the spa overflow will be continuous to circulate the water (when not in spa mode), correct?

 

[Jimrahbe]

Ret,

The problem I see is that when in the Pool mode, a lot of water will go to the spa spillover and then you will still need to power the waterfall and the two magic bowls and the bubbler.

The bubbler uses water just like everything else...

An IntelliFlo at full speed is a pretty loud pump. The main point of having a VS pump is to have the ability to run it as slow as you can and still get the job done. The slower they run the quieter they are.

I am not a water flow expert, so as I said before, I may be all wet about there not being enough flow..

I suggest you ask your pool builder what he thinks.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Retthood2]

Isn’t the blower supposed to be actually attached to the PVC? They say the are ready for the safety inspection but this makes no sense… Why would they run the PVC pipe on a corner where you can’t actually attach it to the blower?

 

[Jimrahbe]

Ret,

I thought the blower sat on top of that pipe???

Jim R.

 

[Retthood2]

Ret,

I thought the blower sat on top of that pipe???

Jim R.

Nope. It’s just sticking out of the ground in the general vicinity.

 

[Jimrahbe]

Ret,

I'm pretty sure that being in the general vicinity is not going to be close enough.

Jim R.

 

[Retthood2]

PM says “the start up guy hooks that up.” ???? I’m assuming the same guy will bring the salt water chlorinator?

 

[Retthood2]

Wanted to update this post after startup 4 weeks ago. As Jim suspected, the pluming here is terrible. Impossible to have enough flow to simultaneously have spa overflow, 2 water bowls, 3ft waterfall, pool returns, and bubbler working without having pump run at 80GPH (about 85% RPM on a 3HP pump). Trying to automate the water features will be impossible unless every single one of those 3 way valves on the return side is automated. The only current automation is to either select pool or spa mode, then I have to manually go adjust all the other 5 valves on the return side at juuuust the right setting to get the water to flow appropriately if I want to run the water features. I considered buying another 1/2HP pump to power the water features alone. That way, I could at least automate that pump and flow independent of the rest of the pool, allowing for a scheduled time to run the bowls to ensure they don't have stagnant water sitting in them. My Easytouch will support one more pump, bu do you think it's feasible? I was also considering hiringng someone to re-plumb the whole thing to be more in line with Jim's original recommendations. What do y'all think?

 

[Jimrahbe]

Ret,

I suggest that you use it 'as is' for a while and then decide what you want to do..

My "pull it out of my rear" guess is that 90% pool owners use their water features a lot the first season, and then over the next year, or so, don't use them much, or at all.. Maybe to impress the guests, but they don't really make swimming any more fun..

You may be different, but time will tell.

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Retthood2]

Ret,

I suggest that you use it 'as is' for a while and then decide what you want to do..

My "pull it out of my rear" guess is that 90% pool owners use their water features a lot the first season, and then over the next year, or so, don't use them much, or at all.. Maybe to impress the guests, but they don't really make swimming any more fun..

You may be different, but time will tell.

Thanks,

Jim R.

I get that. My biggest concern is that I'm gone for weeks at a time for work and without an automated way to ensure the water changes over in the bowls, they get green and gross inside and I doubt the service company is going to be cleaning them out by hand on a weekly visit. Do you think it's even possible to add in an extra pump at this point?

 

[Retthood2]

I'd also be a lot more likely to use the waaaay too expensive features if I could use them like the PB said I was going to be able to (via app and Alexa commands). Now that I know the sales guy was literally a used car salesman months before, it makes sense that he had no idea what he was talking about. At this point, I'm trying to figure out how to make it function as I expected so I can actually get some care-free use out of the money I spent and not stress over having to re-engineer the whole system every time I want to be calmed by the sounds of running water.

 

[Retthood2]

I'm also throwing artificial turf and a putting green so don't want to change my mind after that's all laid down and it becomes even more expensive to "fix."