Had this home/pool for 3 years, maintaining chemistry has been easy but that's pretty much all I have done.
I took a serious look at the equipment as I am learning more about it... and realized some things are a mess. Pool was built in 1998.
Our big pain point is that the pressure side pool cleaner in-wall screen gets clogged constantly, as in every day. When we bought the house, the pressure cleaner was completely disconnected. We had a pool guy come out and he hooked it up AFTER the filter, he said this would be better because the pool filter would take care of any debris and we wouldn't need to mess with cleaning out an energy bowl. That has been a big mistake. I have to pressurize the entire system up to 25 PSI to get the cleaner to work, and there are cracks in the filter cartridge manifold that is letting lots of debris pass into the cleaner line.
Another odd thing - is I only have a single pipe return coming back to the equipment. Most of the time I see a line for the floor drains (I have two) and a line for the skimmer. I appear to only have a single line which means both my floor drains are connected together, and then this runs to my skimmer? Therefore I am not pulling any suction from my floor drains ever, unless the debris basket is clogged or the skimmer float valve is actuated? Is that correct?
I also noticed I don't appear to have a check valve on the return line just before the pump. How important is this? I thought this was necessary to make it easier on the pump to prime back up after it has been off?
My thought process is:
1. Add a check valve to single return line (if necessary)
2. Place a jandy 3way valve off the pump pressure side with one output going to filter, and the other going to pressure side pool cleaner, with an inline energy bowl filter. My assumption is with an energy bowl filter, we'd only have to clean that like once a week for the pressure side cleaner instead of daily like we do with the in-hose screen?
Any additional recommendations or holes in this plan?
I took a serious look at the equipment as I am learning more about it... and realized some things are a mess. Pool was built in 1998.
Our big pain point is that the pressure side pool cleaner in-wall screen gets clogged constantly, as in every day. When we bought the house, the pressure cleaner was completely disconnected. We had a pool guy come out and he hooked it up AFTER the filter, he said this would be better because the pool filter would take care of any debris and we wouldn't need to mess with cleaning out an energy bowl. That has been a big mistake. I have to pressurize the entire system up to 25 PSI to get the cleaner to work, and there are cracks in the filter cartridge manifold that is letting lots of debris pass into the cleaner line.
Another odd thing - is I only have a single pipe return coming back to the equipment. Most of the time I see a line for the floor drains (I have two) and a line for the skimmer. I appear to only have a single line which means both my floor drains are connected together, and then this runs to my skimmer? Therefore I am not pulling any suction from my floor drains ever, unless the debris basket is clogged or the skimmer float valve is actuated? Is that correct?
I also noticed I don't appear to have a check valve on the return line just before the pump. How important is this? I thought this was necessary to make it easier on the pump to prime back up after it has been off?
My thought process is:
1. Add a check valve to single return line (if necessary)
2. Place a jandy 3way valve off the pump pressure side with one output going to filter, and the other going to pressure side pool cleaner, with an inline energy bowl filter. My assumption is with an energy bowl filter, we'd only have to clean that like once a week for the pressure side cleaner instead of daily like we do with the in-hose screen?
Any additional recommendations or holes in this plan?