Pool and Attached Spa valves - So Many - Help please!

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D

dherndon

0
Mar 21, 2016
3
Tampa
Just moved into our first home this past weekend and to my surprise the previous owners left me no instructions on how to run the pool. All I'm capable of right now is turning on the pool pump.

The temps outside are dropping to high 40s tonight and it could be our last cool night before summer so I'm really hoping to run the spa tonight. Can anyone tell without labels on the valves which ones need to be turned on to isolate the attached spa.

Currently the skimmer is running in the pool and the spa is overflowing into the pool so my guess is I need to turn off the returns, skimmer and drain in the pool then turn on the drain in the spa?
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:wave: Welcome to TFP!!!

Wow, that is a bit of a mess and unfortunate that they are all ball valves which tend to start to stick and break. Pool valves like the Jandy Neverlube are much better.

On the suction side, which is by the pump on the left, the left most pipe is the suction line from the spa, the middle valve is likely the pool floor drain, and the right valve is the pool skimmer (this is the only one currently open).

The return side is more tricky since the pipe disappears under the ground. I can not tell where the heater falls in the configuration. You may have to do some experimenting to determine what the 3 black return valves are for. I would just close all but one and see where the water flows too.

I think the water flows out of the filter and down into the ground, then comes back up on the far right where is turns quickly and through a red valve. The red valve on a an angle is a bypass for the heater which allow you to have some of the water not go through the heater, since it is closed, all the water is going through the heater and then back down into the ground through the vertical red valve. The pipe then come back up out of the ground just to the left where there is no black valve and then returns to the pool/spa through the 3 black valves.

Hope that helps some.

I might have the feed to and from the heater backward, but that would not affect the functionality.

- - - Updated - - -

Actually on 2nd thought, the left most black valve may be to the spa, since that looks like it could be a check valve down near the ground.

Is the spa elevated a bit above the pool?

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, to answer your specific question about isolating the spa. I think you need to open the left most suction line and close the other 2. And then close the 2 right black valve return lines.
 
Looks like you'll have to do some process of elimination... is your filter missing its top? You'll need to have that installed before doing anything. :cool:

You'll ALWAYS want to have at least one of the red valves on the left open on the suction side of the pump when doing so.

The center grey valves look to be the ones that control where the return flow goes. Want to always have at least one of those open as well. Perhaps the one with no valve in that group is the supply side for those 3 valves?

The group of red valves on the right would allow you to control flow of water from the heater to the pool, the spa or perhaps to bypass the heater. Easier to tell if you know the pressure and suction side of the lines as they come out of the heater, which should be labeled on the heater housing or in your heater manual, which you should be able to find online based on the manufacturer and model.
 
The heater valves seem weird to me. I can not see why there are 3 in the locations they are in. The only one that can actually do anything useful is the one on the slant. The other 2 are in the wrong places to be able to shut off all flow to the heater and still allow water flow.
 
Wow you guys have been super helpful. jbizzle was spot on with which ones to turn to isolate the spa. Was able to isolate the spa and get it to 103degrees last night. Perfect night for it too with the fullmoon and cooler temps.

In using the hottub though we discovered that there's a white powdery residue on the walls of the spa. It's visible on your hand if you run your hand along the wall and I turned on the jets for a second which made the water super cloudy. My wife and I noticed that our skin was SUPER dry when we got out.

Any ideas on what this could be?

I had my water tested on Saturday and added all the chemicals they said I needed to get my levels where they needed to be.
 
Could be that your CH levels are too high and you're seeing calcium build up coming out of the jets and plumbing.

The best way to test your water is to test yourself. If you had it tested at the pool store and bought what they told you, it's likely that you didn't need any of it. "Free" pool store testing is inaccurate and only designed to sell you products. Here on TFP, we teach reliable pool management for home owners based on accurate home testing. Test kits with Taylor reagents will give you better results than most any pool store and TFP recommendations on chemicals will save you $$$ and you'll only put into your pool what it actually needs.

It would be interesting to see the test results they gave you and the chemicals they sold you and had you add to the pool.
 
I'll take your advice and grab a test kit to do it myself. My dad always did it himself growing up so I'll ask him to show me his ways.

The test came back as follows:
Total Chlorine: 0.0ppm
Free Chlorine: 0.0ppm
pH 7.0
Base Demand: 10
Total Alkalinity: 30ppm
Calcium Hardenss: 245ppm
Stabilizer: 60ppm
Total Dissolved Solids: 1,200ppm

They had me add 10lbs of Suncoast Total Alkalinity, 1.2 gallons (my father-in-law poured both jugs)... and 5.9lbs of Suncoast Calcium Hardness Increaser...again my f-i-l poured the whole bag which i believe was 8lbs....

but with all that said the spa had the powdery/paint-like coating that when brushed made the spa cloudy the day we put all those in. And still cloudy 2 days later after having the pump run for about 8-10 hours a day sunday and monday.
 
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