I knew I was Pool Stored when...

Winger 03 said:

I had the drain cap on my filter break. It was plastic and old and I tightened it just a bit too much. Pool store had one for about $12 or so. As I stared at the broken cap, the size looked very familiar. I then went to Lowes and picked up a 2 pack of caps for an outdoor garden hose for 97 cents.

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Just a caution, as I am having a similar experience (wrote about it here). I needed a filter plug quick, because I couldn't run my pump without that plug. The $25 Pentair OEM part would take almost a week to arrive. The $13 generic one I ended up buying arrived in a couple days and got me running. And I saw some on Amazon that were half as much. Very tempting. But the reviews revealed that some of those cheaper third-party parts failed after a time. That got me nervous, so I ordered the OEM part, too, which I will install today, and keep the generic as a temporary back up.

Point being, a filter is a pressure vessel and its components are subjected to many extremes: the pressure, temperature swings throughout the year, and even each day, a constant exposure to harsh chemicals (chlorine, acid, etc), and sometimes some serious torque (as you now know). A filter component failure could be as simple as a small leak, or it could be catastrophic, emptying your tank, some amount of your pool, and potentially causing an expensive pump failure (which is the exact story an Amazon reviewer told after buying a cheap plug). In other words, it is not the place to try and save money.

So your 97¢ part might fit, and it might not*, and it might be made out of great materials, or it might not. You won't know until it fails. Up to you, but personally, I didn't want to chance it to save 12 bucks. Coincidentally, that was your savings amount, too...

* A very cheap PVC plug would screw into my filter. Sort of. Turns out, the NPT threads of the PVC cap are tapered, while the threads on my filter and its plug are actually straight threads. So they seem to fit at first, but they don't, and shouldn't be trusted to. So that's something else to consider with a DIY fix.

Sometimes, you do get what you pay for, even at a pool store.

The test results they give you then shows recommendations like Step 1 add X which cost $80 to get when you could have gotten baking soda for $15 and you probably didn't need to add. Step 2 add X which cost $30 but you could have gotten Borax for $5. It goes on and on and then you end up spending $400-$500 to get your pool in range according to the Pool Store, repeat this process 2 more times while getting algae, not being able to swim and then you have been properly pool stored.