I'm in the process of opening a pool that has been closed for several years. I "adopted" my wife's pool when we married. It was about ten years old at that time and she hadn't used it in a couple of seasons. The liner had some bad tears and leaked horribly. We didn't have the money to repair it last year but are getting it going now. Our new liner was installed a couple of weeks ago and it looks beautiful. As soon as we started the pump though, sand started coming out the inlets. From my own research, it sounded like we have one or more damaged laterals in our Hayward S200 sand filter.
I dug into this chore today. I got all the sand and water out and gutted the filter. The top diffuser had a chunk broken out of it, lateral holder was cracked and a couple of the laterals had come out and were lying to the side. I'm going to buy ten new laterals, a lateral holder and a top diffuser as well has a handful of new o-rings. It was a pain, but I managed to do everything through the main access at the top of the filter. The lateral holder was just barely too large to fit out with the laterals in place however, even with all the laterals in the up position. It was broken anyway, so I broke a couple more out of the holder and was then able to move it around in such a way that I could get it out. Installing the new one is going to be a pain though. The only way I can think of to do it would be to put the laterals in the tank, then the holder and then try to assemble everything one handed, in the dark, pretty much be feel, through the access hole.
This all sounds pretty crazy when I could just take the tank apart. The few people I've mentioned this too talk like this is really big taboo. I know taking all those many bolts apart to separate the tank hemispheres would be a pain, but is there any real, concrete, good reasons not to take the tank apart to simplify reinstalling all the laterals and piping? Has anyone ever done this and succeeded? Why do so many people seem to advise against this course of action? Removing and reinstalling all those dad blamed bolts aside, it seems like this would be a no-brainer. Am I missing something?
Thanks to anyone that might be able to offer any advice or knowledge.
Sincerely,
- Byron Followell
I dug into this chore today. I got all the sand and water out and gutted the filter. The top diffuser had a chunk broken out of it, lateral holder was cracked and a couple of the laterals had come out and were lying to the side. I'm going to buy ten new laterals, a lateral holder and a top diffuser as well has a handful of new o-rings. It was a pain, but I managed to do everything through the main access at the top of the filter. The lateral holder was just barely too large to fit out with the laterals in place however, even with all the laterals in the up position. It was broken anyway, so I broke a couple more out of the holder and was then able to move it around in such a way that I could get it out. Installing the new one is going to be a pain though. The only way I can think of to do it would be to put the laterals in the tank, then the holder and then try to assemble everything one handed, in the dark, pretty much be feel, through the access hole.
This all sounds pretty crazy when I could just take the tank apart. The few people I've mentioned this too talk like this is really big taboo. I know taking all those many bolts apart to separate the tank hemispheres would be a pain, but is there any real, concrete, good reasons not to take the tank apart to simplify reinstalling all the laterals and piping? Has anyone ever done this and succeeded? Why do so many people seem to advise against this course of action? Removing and reinstalling all those dad blamed bolts aside, it seems like this would be a no-brainer. Am I missing something?
Thanks to anyone that might be able to offer any advice or knowledge.
Sincerely,
- Byron Followell
