Caretaker pop-up head settings

[elyk40]

I have never been really happy with the caretaker in-floor cleaning system we purchased with our pool. There always seems to be dirt left behind after each cleaning cycle. The builder is out of business and I don't know who to ask my questions to. This forum seems to be a wealth of information so here is my question.

Is there a certain direction the heads should be pointing to get the best cleaning results???

Should they all point in the same direction or should they be staggered one following the other???

 

[Guest]

Are they not rotating when they pop up?

 

[elyk40]

They are rotating I just went through the whole system replaced a few that the plastic teeth had gotten chewed up. When placing them back I was wondering if they should be pointed in a certain staggered spraying position from shallow to deep end to get the best cleaning coverage.

 

[Guest]

If they are rotating that is the important part. The intent is for the heads to get the debris up in suspension and to your skimmer. Any direction will accomplish that.

I know that the correct way to install a floor system is to send the pool drawing to the floor cleaning system builder, and they do a lay out for head placement, which the plumber follows. However, I have never seen a plumber check the individual head placement direction, nor have I seen it ever come back on the diagram with that info.

While I am not a fan of floor systems, the do introduce warm water lower in the pool (helpful if you have solar or are heating the pool). Since you have the system, and it was quite expensive, it is good that you are maintaining it. You should be fine installing them in any position that they will go in.

 

[elyk40]

Thank you simicrintz you answered my question I really appreciate you taking the time to get back to me.

 

[Guest]

Happy to help

 

[waste]

Welcome to TFP!!

I think that you're correct that the heads should be aimed properly at the time of installation

However ( :? ) I'm certified on selling, planning and installing them (Caretaker99) and nowhere was it mentioned to do so :grrrr:

Bruce is correct about leafy debris, get it up and to the skimmers, but - sand and heavy debris are supposed to end up in the MD. That won't happen (quickly) if different heads or banks are fighting each other.

{as I think on this, I believe that the drawings they showed had all heads facing the same direction as the initial start-up and they all ratchet through 32(?) positions -- however, because of walls, steps, etc, even having them all in sync to begin with would end up with heads fighting heads }

I do know that, over the 8 - 10 hour daily run cycle for a pool, the pool is pretty clean, whichever way the heads point initially

 

[Woodberg]

We have a Paramount In-floor system which may work different than the Caretaker system, so this post may not be totally relevant. We have a dedicated pump for the in-floor system which I run for about 3 hours each day. This pump operates all of the pop up heads. We also have 2 fixed nozzles that continually point to the main drain and are operated by the main circulation pump so they stay up most of the day. It doesn't matter how the pop up heads are pointed because they don't all ratchet the same amount. Over time they are all pointed different ways, except for the fixed nozzles. The way the system works is that debris is stirred up and either goes back to the top and is caught by the skimmers or settles back down in the deep end where the fixed nozzles push it into the main drain. Our system works great and over a few hours virtually all of the debris is gone.

I would definitely contact the Caretaker company and get their input into ideas for making the system work better. Paramount has been really good helping me optimize our system. One thing we had to do was change the nozzle size on a few heads to either reduce or increase flow. I'm actually thinking about increasing the nozzle size on the fixed heads to get a little more flow to the main drain. In our case we use an Intelliflo pump running at a low speed so I don't get as much flow from the fixed nozzles. By increasing the nozzle size I'm hoping to increase the flow.

 

[skrichard]

waste, I'm fairly newbie here and have ISSUES with an inherited pool with a caretaker (well it says on one of the pop up heads Environ Pools). How can we contact one another for a Q & a session?