Hey all, sorry for the long first post, but I have a bit of a story and some questions...
I'm at a hotel and went down to the pool and found the water surface stagnant with visible debris and the weir walls on the skimmer not moving. Then I noticed the, presumably, return jets under the (two) skimmers were plugged. I was a bit skived out and let the front desk know something was wrong with the pool. They called the owner, who it turns out maintains the pool himself, who came in and insisted everything was fine, before he realized he had left the skimmer intake valve shut. He opened the valve, the weir walls deployed, and the skimmers are now obviously working. He made a bit of a show of manually skimming the surface and checking the pH and chlorine before saying it might just take a bit for all the debris to be cleared.
Now, I'm no expert, but I used to work as a pool boy in high school, and I did the basic maintenance on my parents pool and then later my own, and I have never seen a pool without surface returns. I told him it looked like someone had been doing maintenance and plugged the returns and forgot to unplug them, but he insists all the returns are on the floor. Given the pump hasn't overheated and there is now circulation, obviously there are deep water returns. Is it possible the equipment set-up doesn't need surface returns?
He humoured me and let me try to uncap the lines under the skimmer, but they are on really tight and the tools he had on hand didn't fit properly, so I couldn't get them off. He did show me the equipment room, where he has three filters set up, but is in the middle of working on two of them, so they aren't in the loop. All the equipment is new and the girls at the front desk told me after he left that they had drained the pool only a month ago to acid wash the walls. So I'm liking my theory that someone capped the lines and forgot to uncap them, but is it possible that the lines are abandoned in place and the new equipment doesn't need them?
The chemistry looked OK, while the surface looks stagnant to the eye, the skimmers and weir walls are actually doing a pretty good job clearing the debris, but I don't see how the circulation could be working properly, I would think it's full of dead spots?
I'm at a hotel and went down to the pool and found the water surface stagnant with visible debris and the weir walls on the skimmer not moving. Then I noticed the, presumably, return jets under the (two) skimmers were plugged. I was a bit skived out and let the front desk know something was wrong with the pool. They called the owner, who it turns out maintains the pool himself, who came in and insisted everything was fine, before he realized he had left the skimmer intake valve shut. He opened the valve, the weir walls deployed, and the skimmers are now obviously working. He made a bit of a show of manually skimming the surface and checking the pH and chlorine before saying it might just take a bit for all the debris to be cleared.
Now, I'm no expert, but I used to work as a pool boy in high school, and I did the basic maintenance on my parents pool and then later my own, and I have never seen a pool without surface returns. I told him it looked like someone had been doing maintenance and plugged the returns and forgot to unplug them, but he insists all the returns are on the floor. Given the pump hasn't overheated and there is now circulation, obviously there are deep water returns. Is it possible the equipment set-up doesn't need surface returns?
He humoured me and let me try to uncap the lines under the skimmer, but they are on really tight and the tools he had on hand didn't fit properly, so I couldn't get them off. He did show me the equipment room, where he has three filters set up, but is in the middle of working on two of them, so they aren't in the loop. All the equipment is new and the girls at the front desk told me after he left that they had drained the pool only a month ago to acid wash the walls. So I'm liking my theory that someone capped the lines and forgot to uncap them, but is it possible that the lines are abandoned in place and the new equipment doesn't need them?
The chemistry looked OK, while the surface looks stagnant to the eye, the skimmers and weir walls are actually doing a pretty good job clearing the debris, but I don't see how the circulation could be working properly, I would think it's full of dead spots?
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