A&A In Floor T-Valve Removal

[Ozzzz666]

Hi,

Sorry for the long post, question is at the end.

I guess like most of you I have been getting the pool ready for the summer. With all the rain and wind lately I noticed that some of my A&A In Floor heads weren’t rotating. I pulled them all and found a few with mangled springs, a few that didn’t feel smooth when rotating back down etc so I decided now is the time to replace them all with the newer style heads. I put one in and ran the pump and noticed that there was still flow going to one zone while another zone was active.

I opened the valve assembly to check everything out and found that one of the brackets on a T-valve was broken, causing the valve to not sit back down where it was supposed to. I also saw some scoring on the underside of the cam so I figure that something got in there at one time and broke the bracket. I ordered a new glue in T-valve and figured I would try and epoxy the bracket while waiting for the part so I can keep generating chlorine. While putting everything back together I accidentally dropped the center shaft down one of the holes !!!! OOOPS, and those holes are deep so I don’t think I will ever be able to recover it. I just hope there are enough right angles in the pipes to keep is stuck down there forever!

I have ordered a complete retrofit kit to replace all the moving parts including new T-valves. My question is this, what is the best way to remove all the T-valves that are glued to the housing ?

Thanks for reading and any advice you can provide.

 

[proavia]

A couple questions....

Are you the original pool owner?
Have you contacted A&A directly about the T-valve seats?

The shaft may make it all the way to one of the heads. You may eventually be able to retrieve it by removing the heads in that zone.

 

[Ozzzz666]

I am the original pool owner.

I have not contacted A&A directly.

I was thinking of maybe removing all of the heads and let it run for a while just to see if the shaft may make it out. I don't know which zone though as I had 2 valves flipped open at the time. Maybe if I put some dye in those 2 holes I could at least work out which heads to remove instead of all of them.

 

[dirtfrmr]

I think the a a heads have a lifetime warranty to the original owner.

 

[proavia]

The original owner has a life time warranty. Contact A&A with your issues - they are very helpful. Save yourself the time, hassle and cost, call them.

I've had all my heads and gear set replaced 3 times over about 17 years ..... all at no cost (well, they will charge their current retail to you to send replacement parts - but once you return the old parts they will refund the total cost, including their shipping cost. You only pay shipping to return the parts to them).

One member here contacted them and they actually had a local tech come to his house to look the system over. The tech had new parts ordered, returned to install them and tweak the system settings..... all at ZERO cost to the pool owner.