Sorry it has been so long -- the pool is great. The pool company believes they can chip out and patch the 2 rust spots underwater (they call a "Pool Dr." company....).
I have been spending a bit of time on the Intellitouch automation. It's a little cumbersome, but I'm getting it. Not the most intuitive interface. The pool company said they can't remember another pool/spa combo (no water-features) with 6 automated valves. I have the pool programmed as follows:
6:00-7:00: Spa mode at 20 gpm to keep spa chlorinated (IC40 not turned on yet, but in theory) and keep fresh water in the spa pipes.
7:00-9:00: Vacuum mode (Kreepy Krauly). I have a dedicated vac port for this, so skimmer turns off to allow the flor to remain low and the fcleaner to be turned off entirely when swimming. This is the valve that really is not needed. Once installed, it seems the vac by itself (no skimmer) only needs 17 gpm to work corectly -- could have been on with skimmer without real problems. I have had the Kreepy Krauly seck air a few times and shut down the pump. The VF will not re-prime in this mode -- too much head I guess... I may have to have the vac valve stay upen (partial skimmer) and up the gpm to compensate. We'll see.
9:00-10:00: Skimmer mode. This is normal pool, no vac, no spill, but with 50 gpm to circulate the water and clean the top of the pool. There are not aimable eyes for the returns, only holes int he sire of the pool at the returns (angled) unfortunately, so i cannot aim them a little higher. The shallow end 9farthest from the equip) has half of the return flow as the closer jets, so this mode helps -- I might up it to 60 gpm.
10:00-2:00: Normal pool mode. No spill, about 25 gpm. Since this is not normal mode, the Intellitouch determines the flow based on the total run time and gallons. With all of the other programs I have going on, this is a useless number (though conservative). I will eventually run the numbers for each of the programs (once -I finish messing with them) and determine the gallons needed in normal pool mode and fake the total pool size to get one turn/day.
2:00-4:00: Spillway on (most common swimming time) at 50 gpm (returns off) for a nice spill effect. Also serves to chlorinate the spa (second time -- also chlorinated in spa mode at 6:00am). Also needed to keep the level of the spa up -- evaporation will kill an inch every couple of days in this little warm body of water.
4:00-6:00: Back to normal pool mode for a while.
The spa bypass works well -- jets will knoch you out of your seat. It will achieve a max of 108 gpm at the head pressure I have -- I have it set at 100.
I 'll detail more on the solar later.
Steve