Excessive System Pressure Mystery

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crustfan

crustfan

0
Jul 6, 2012
35
Palm Coast, FL
My system is running at 30 psi and I think my heater may be clogged with dog hair. When I went to clean the filter I discovered a fistful of hair in the top of the unit so its possible that it made its way to the heater. This is causing the pressure meter on the filter and Caretaker to read around 30 when the startup pressure is 20.

Here's the things I've checked:
  • The pump seems to draw water from the suction lines and will fill the basket on skimmer and/or main drain and/or spa.
    When the suction lines are closed the pump will evacuate the water quickly, so the impeller seems ok.
    I've cleaned the filter which is only 2.5 months old with TSP but have not done an acid wash.
    I ran the system without the filter and it's still 30.
    I've looked inside the swg and it is clean.
    I've taken apart the Caretaker and reassembled it. Cleaned the dome screen. All seems ok.

High speed / low speed, doesn't make a difference. Sometimes I get enough flow through the swg but mostly not. Sometimes the Caretaker popups will work but mostly not. I set the return valve to 75% Spa /25% Caretaker and this temporarily lowered the pressure in the Caretaker to around 12psi and then the popups worked but the pressure went back up to 30. The Caretaker probably has problems operating at 30 and so shuts down?

I think the mostly likely culprit is something stuck in the tubes of the heat exchanger. I think my pool guy and I are going to remove the polymer head and look inside.

Afterwards we are going to install a bypass valve and check valve to the heater. Use skimmer socks. Clean pump basket daily.

Any other thoughts or ideas?
 
OK, I gotta ask, being that I'm a Pacific Northwest native, born & raised. Why perchance do you have a pool heater in Florida? Very perplexed by this.

As far as your post, I'm no expert by any stretch, so I'll await their input, but with what you have mentioned that's exactly what I'd be doing. Teardown & clean, check every nook & cranny of that puppy, leave no valve, ortifice, line, hose or pipe unchecked. Betcha find some fun stuff in there! If not, hey, you learned a thing or 2 more and you can go home, or go back inside. ;)
Naw, then you'll know where to look next.
Because it's not just about the fix, it's about the adventure along the way. :-D

If that doesn't fix it, I'd put a bypass somewhere upstream of the heater, that way you can take it out of the loop and see if the problem goes away.
Also, from what I have seen here on the forums, having a pressure of around 30psi isn't uncommon with those caretakers, there's a pressure gauge on the unit too, it seems to usually read much lower, almost half.
 
I think you are on the right track. Installing a heater bypass loop would answer your question and not be a bad addition permanently to your system.

y_not,
Heaters quite common in FL....almost mandatory if pool has a screen enclosure.
 
It's a pool / spa combo, so I have a gas heater for the spa. In 30 minutes or less, the water is ready for a soak. I don't use it very much. Though for preventive maintenance I should fire it up every month to burn off any insects and then make sure to drain it after it's bypassed because I've read that the standing water that's left inside can leave deposits of bad things after the water evaporates.

Does anybody know if the bypass will be a manual valve or controlled by the Aqua-Rite system panel? What's to prevent someone from running the heater while it's bypassed? Right now I toggle from pool mode to spa mode and the system automatically changes the intake and return valves. I then press a button to turn on the heater and another for the blower motor.

The pressure gauge on the Caretaker does read around 30 and is usually much lower. I was surprised by the lack of quality of the black dome. It seems to be made of very brittle, cheap, fiberglass or plastic. There are small linear cracks on the rim of the dome where people have perhaps over-tightened the screws and while I was tightening one screw a fingernail piece broke through and chipped off the other side so that it wasn't able to hold the screw/nut anymore. I bought some Advanced Crazy Glue and put it back in place and it seems to hold. I'm not very happy with the brand nor do I have their "lifetime" warranty because of a foul up on the part of the original builder of the pool not submitting a drawing to Caretaker. If it needs to be replaced does anyone have any suggestions for an alternate product? I have five 1.5" pipes as my only returns into the pool.
 
Sounds like something is wrong with the in-floor which is not a surprise. I am not a big fan of in-floor systems because they are highly inefficient and too many things can go wrong. A robotic cleaner is much more effective and it doesn't require the pump to run which makes it much more energy efficient.

But as far as the bypass is concern, with an in-floor it really doesn't make sense to have a bypass since the in-floor has much more head loss than the heater so I doubt you would see much of a difference.
 
duraleigh said:
...y_not,
Heaters quite common in FL....almost mandatory if pool has a screen enclosure.
Click to expand...
Does a screen enclosure facilitate the need for a heater due to the decreased heating effects of the sun's UV rays?

neverclearone & OP,
I had no idea Florida's night time temperatures dipped that low. All I remember is when I visited Disney World, the heat was INSANE! Correction, mostly the humidity /w the heat, so bad enough.

When it gets down into the 60's here at night in the summer and the 90's during the day, the water in my small AGP stays about 78-81deg F.
Sometimes gets down to 76 if it got really cold the night before, or multiple nights in a row. Perfectly fine temp by me, hence I was puzzelered. :p
 
mas985,

I'm new to pools so have never done much thinking about head loss. But if I understand correctly you're saying that the relative distance of the return pipes from the Caretaker is much greater than the length of pipe run to the heater, so cutting out the heater would most likely have a negligible effect on total system pressure. (Though if it did, removing this section may slightly increase system pressure.)

However, the main reasons for the bypass are to
  • 1. Have one less place for dog hair to accumulate. I have two Labrador retrievers in the pool each day. They say 1 dog is the equivalent stress of 50 people. My new pool guy says not to let the dogs in to swim, but that's not realistic. I need a good maintenance strategy for the future.
    2. Preserve the life of the heater. I just got a bunch of new equipment and am hyper sensitive about trying to make it last. I also like the idea of a check valve between the swg and the heater. I've read that it's not very necessary but it can't hurt.The old pool guy must not have kept the proper water chemistry because the heater was corroded from the inside out. So I've taken on the maintenance task myself. I had the equipment replaced at the end of June and have started learning since then. I passed the CPO exam a couple of weeks ago but that hardly makes me an expert.

New pool guy is supposed to show on Monday. Hopefully things will be clearer by then.
 
1. If dog hair is getting to your heater, your filter has a problem and you need to fix that first. Nothing should get past the filter except for tiniest particles (~10 microns). Your pressure rise is probably due to the in-floor and not dog hair in the heater.

2. Bypassing the heater will probably not have any affect on the life of the heater. Most heaters have bypasses already built into them so they already bypass most of the water. There is a thermostat valve which opens when the water heats up and that is what allows water to flow through the heat exchanger. You might check with the manufacture but I suspect your heater already has a bypass in the manifold. But even if it didn't, I am not sure how bypassing would increase heater life anyway. Water velocity through the heater really doesn't wear it out any faster since filtered water is not very abrasive. So for both head loss and heater life, I really don't believe a bypass is going to help much.

According to this your heater does have a bypass.
 
Excellent points!

1. Hair shouldn't be getting past the filter. When I first went to clean the filter I found a small toupee's worth at the top. There's a small plastic funnel that points up and sits on top of the cartridge. I can't remember exactly if the hair was on top of the funnel or underneath but it would make sense for it to be on top I think since under the funnel is the core of the cartridge and the filtered water.

2. There seems to be two devices - a Unitherm governor and a high flow rate automatic bypass. I don't know how these work together. The manual says the Unitherm maintains the water temp between 105 to prevent condensation and 115 to prevent scaling. It mentions the danger of running the heater for any length of time below 100 and the scaling temps are well above the 115. The pressure regulator says it maintains the proper amount of water flow under varying pressures dictated by the pump and filter. It needs a minimum of 20 GPM and at 125 GPM or above recommends an external bypass. So the pressure regulator seems to always be operating allowing or bypassing water to achieve a correct flow.

I've read another post of yours and in some other places that say a bypass is not necessary unless the pressure is above the 125 GPM. And to not worry about the water damaging the heater. Just keep the chemistry (esp. the pH) correct. Though a check valve might seem like an ok thing to do?

It seems like water is always flowing through the heater and that these bypass devices are only a partial bypass so that the unit operates correctly. So how does the heater heat water if the Unitherm only allows water to flow at 105? Does the unit start heating for a limited time before the Unitherm is allowed to control the flow? What would happen if one tries to heat really cold water and that it never gets up to 105 in the time allowed?

The guts to the Caretaker were replaced a couple of months back. I also had a grout job and the guy left all kinds of old grout at the bottom of the pool. Perhaps that has clogged the intake.
 

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I believe check valves are only important with the puck style chemical feeders. SWGs are less important because the amount of chlorine they generate is not that significant (~1 ppm rise in the pipe) and when the pump stops, the SWG stops. With a puck feeder, the tabs can continually dissolve and the heater could be exposed to the high CL levels but I don't think the risk is very high with a SWG.

So how does the heater heat water if the Unitherm only allows water to flow at 105? Does the unit start heating for a limited time before the Unitherm is allowed to control the flow? What would happen if one tries to heat really cold water and that it never gets up to 105 in the time allowed?
Click to expand...
The temperature they are talking about is the water temperature in heat ex-changer which much much hotter than the pool water. When the heater turns on, the water temperature in the heat ex-changer rises very quickly because there is no water flowing and that temp rise causes the valve to open. It doesn't matter what the pool water temperatures starts at, except it needs to be liquid not frozen, the water in the heat ex-changer will quickly reach 105F and the valve will open. Also, it is important to note that when the valves does open, not all of the water goes through the heat ex-changer. Some is still bypassed to maintain the 105F in the ex-changer.

The guts to the Caretaker were replaced a couple of months back. I also had a grout job and the guy left all kinds of old grout at the bottom of the pool. Perhaps that has clogged the intake.
Click to expand...
There is a good chance they screwed up something although the problem is probably with the return side and not the suction side. When you turn on the Caretaker and cycle through each zone, can you see all of the heads moving in the zone?
 
So when the heater turns on there's no water flowing, ie there's water already in the heat exchanger. So there's stagnant water inside the heat exchanger? Another reason to run the thing periodically to maintain it.

If the heater was clogged, wouldn't the pressure gauge on the Caretaker read zero?

If the suction line were clogged, how would that affect pressure since at the pump things change from suction to pressure?

We did get some of the pop zones to work but I don't think it cycled through completely. The pressure on the Caretaker was in the teens but then it shot back up to 30. Could it be that one of the zones is clogged? It worked like that when we set the return bypass valve to 75% to go to spa, 25% to Caretaker.

We also set it to all spa jets on return, water fills up the spa, spills over, and then goes to skimmer/main drain. It was at 30. They were ready to leave it like that so that the pool would generate chlorine. But I was uncomfortable running the system at the high pressure without knowing why. I can't remember if we had swg flo problems or not in that scenario.
 
If the heater were clogged, the Caretaker would read low pressure.
If the suction were clogged, all your pressures would be low.

To me, it sounds like one of the zones is clogged/messed up. If some are working and then the pressure spikes when it gets to a certain zone.

When running in spa only mode, the pressure is still 30psi? What did it used to be in spa only mode? That may not be abnormally high depending on how high you are running the pump and how the spa is plumbed.
 
Great point Jason. I can't say what the normal system pressure for the spa is given that it's not something I used to pay attention to and that new equipment was installed at end of June and I don't use the spa very often. Spa mode is set to run at high speed 95% power through 4 jets / eyelets which I'm not sure of the size. They're not all the same pressure. One is super high, 2 are medium pressure, and the fourth is lower. I learned that I could change them out to different sizes to equalize the pressure. But I like that some are rougher than others. I just change my seat.
 
A new Caretaker valve seems to have solved the problem. All the zones work now. When I undid the threaded pvc union at the top of the old valve I heard a whoosh of pressure release and a gulp, gulp, gulp of water from within the heater.

Though the filter pressure still runs at 30psi, at the Caretaker it functioned at 20psi. So I lowered the speed of the motor to get 20psi at the filter and 15psi at the Caretaker valve.

I'm annoyed that the new valve has a slight leak where the pressure gauge is screwed into the dome. It happens at 20psi (not at 15psi though). I think the "RectorSeal T Plus 2" pipe thread sealant may be the stuff to fix it? Just unscrew the gauge, apply enough sealant and don't overtighten?
 
I also have an in-floor cleaning system and also get a lot of dog hair in my pool. I have a leaf canister that pre filters water before the pump. I can get 90% of the dog hair out by just using a ladies knee high nylon inside the leaf canister. They are cheap and you just have to change them frequently.

BTW: My system runs right around 30 psi and always has.
 
I removed the gauge and put some Oatey Great White on it. It started to leak again. I had counted the number of exposed machine threads and there were three. I tightened it down past that and it seems ok now.

Thanks for the reassurance wrt system pressure. Your Hayward and mine both have a max 50psi, and I don't want to get close to it.

So the problem wasn't hair but I still plan to use the skimmer socks. I'll give nylons a try after I exhaust my supply.
 
crustfan said:
Your Hayward and mine both have a max 50psi, and I don't want to get close to it.
Click to expand...
No worries, it isn't even possible with the EcoStar or any residential pool pump.
 

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