My house here in Thailand was built by a UK guy 67 yo who claimed he built houses for many years but after my wife and his wife became good friends, I found out that isn't exactly correct. He has built 4 houses in this neighborhood with mine being the third one.
He subcontracted the pool for the first house to a local pool company and after watching HOW they built the pool, he thought that looked easy enough, so he built the second one himself mostly with 2 Thai brothers and their wives. The first house has had to rip up one whole side of the pool where the return jet piping runs back to the pump room because the PVC pipes broke. A few months before they discovered the water leaking out of pool, there was an earthquake in Chiang Rai, 3 hrs away. He told the owners of the house, the pipe sheared off because of the earthquake and they bought it. It is strange that the house was not damaged, no other houses were damaged, and no other pool in the neighborhood had any damage at all, and only the piping on THIS pool broke. The reason the PVC broke was the way the hole was backfilled and no compaction. When the pool company broke through the concrete to fix the PVC piping, there was an 8-12 inch void between the bottom of concrete and the top of the dirt, that is how much it settled and that weight on the piping, snapped it like glass.
In my pool, I was losing about 2" of water over night but it never went any lower than that, so we systematically checked each line and could not find a leak. The last thing we checked was the 1/2 plastic conduit to my lights/ When we broke through the concrete, the same thing, there was a 6" to 8" void from bottom of concrete to top of the settled dirt and here is where his lack of experience shows, when the builder said, I thought that joint would be above the water line so I didn't bother glueing it. We cemented that joint and I haven't lost a drop in over a year now.
I have this problem:
If I run my system with only the vacuum line open, it runs fine, pump is fine and no air in filter pot before pump.
Same thing if I have only the Skimmer valve open.
If I try to run on only the Sump (main drain) open it looks like I am drawing air but what is happening is the pipe is partially blocked with what is in this picture and the pump is cavatating because it is not able to get enough water.
This is the 3rd chunk of debris like this that ended up in my filter basket before pump. The pool shop guys were here trying to help me because I thought I had a suction side leak somewhere but they said NO, this line is partially blocked and while they were here and a minute after telling me that, we saw this chunk in the basket.
Hard to tell what it is, I think it is a combination of mud and grout because the builder did not have the experience to protect this pipe from **** entering it during construction.
This is also part of or maybe all of, where my suspended solids are coming from. When I am out there in the pump room, I will keep trying for a few minutes at a time to run with just sump open to increase the inlet pressure in that line and hope more of this debris will break free.
This is the biggest of the 3 pieces that I have captured in the filter basket before the pump.
He subcontracted the pool for the first house to a local pool company and after watching HOW they built the pool, he thought that looked easy enough, so he built the second one himself mostly with 2 Thai brothers and their wives. The first house has had to rip up one whole side of the pool where the return jet piping runs back to the pump room because the PVC pipes broke. A few months before they discovered the water leaking out of pool, there was an earthquake in Chiang Rai, 3 hrs away. He told the owners of the house, the pipe sheared off because of the earthquake and they bought it. It is strange that the house was not damaged, no other houses were damaged, and no other pool in the neighborhood had any damage at all, and only the piping on THIS pool broke. The reason the PVC broke was the way the hole was backfilled and no compaction. When the pool company broke through the concrete to fix the PVC piping, there was an 8-12 inch void between the bottom of concrete and the top of the dirt, that is how much it settled and that weight on the piping, snapped it like glass.
In my pool, I was losing about 2" of water over night but it never went any lower than that, so we systematically checked each line and could not find a leak. The last thing we checked was the 1/2 plastic conduit to my lights/ When we broke through the concrete, the same thing, there was a 6" to 8" void from bottom of concrete to top of the settled dirt and here is where his lack of experience shows, when the builder said, I thought that joint would be above the water line so I didn't bother glueing it. We cemented that joint and I haven't lost a drop in over a year now.
I have this problem:
If I run my system with only the vacuum line open, it runs fine, pump is fine and no air in filter pot before pump.
Same thing if I have only the Skimmer valve open.
If I try to run on only the Sump (main drain) open it looks like I am drawing air but what is happening is the pipe is partially blocked with what is in this picture and the pump is cavatating because it is not able to get enough water.
This is the 3rd chunk of debris like this that ended up in my filter basket before pump. The pool shop guys were here trying to help me because I thought I had a suction side leak somewhere but they said NO, this line is partially blocked and while they were here and a minute after telling me that, we saw this chunk in the basket.
Hard to tell what it is, I think it is a combination of mud and grout because the builder did not have the experience to protect this pipe from **** entering it during construction.
This is also part of or maybe all of, where my suspended solids are coming from. When I am out there in the pump room, I will keep trying for a few minutes at a time to run with just sump open to increase the inlet pressure in that line and hope more of this debris will break free.
This is the biggest of the 3 pieces that I have captured in the filter basket before the pump.
