Recent updates (additional pictures in a few days):
- Rails in! Would have been nice to get better colors, but the choices for sealed steel were paltry.
- Barely even realized the mastich or whatever hadn't been put in yet, but it's now done in light grey color.
- First run of dolphin deluxe 5 vacuum....wow, didn't realize that it was so fast...compared to mx8, this guy is a race car; in a single 3hr run, it nearly scrubs all the tile/walls and steps once, and the pool floor several times. Came with caddy, remote, and cartridge filter plus 3yr warranty.
- Deep heat return programming is up and running somewhat but I'm still unsure if I want it triggered to just focus when cover is on or just focus on a few hours during the hottest parts of each day -- the main returns for the skimmer needs to run longer than I thought. Even with pump on 12hrs/day - the pool may look beautiful, but I see some CC's whenever FC falls even slightly below 3 with 30 cya.
- Heat pump is working and no longer noisy....from what I can guess, it heats up the pool between 0.3-0.5 degrees/hour when temp is at least in the high 50's or low 60's, solar is delivering 3-5 degrees of heat/day too during winter, and while our cover is more safety focused...it's probably cutting our winter heat loss at night to no more than 2 degrees, even when night low is ~43 degrees and the pool is heated to 65-70. We only have the pump on from 7am-7pm and solar is only running from ~10am-4pm now.
- The real biggest issue with heating the pool during winter is the wind, opening the cover up results in water temp dropping perhaps 1 degree every 1-2hrs even with solar on
- I've simplified the heat pump programming and am just going to run intellitouch in solar preferred for time being and we'll connect the heat pump mgmt directly to intellitouch and not use the aux port, so heat pump comes on during morning or night and whenever daytime is cloudy
- I found a nail that the pool cover guys (I assume) had accidently dropped into the pool..it had started to leave a rust stain, kids courageously volunteered to swim and pick up the nail which the brush/skimmer couldn't grab. Stain removed via pole with stone stain remover thingie.
