After a couple unsuccessful tries, my wife and I retired, sold our home of 30+ years, downsized and moved to our "urban cottage" in San Jose. It's an old two story home with a beautiful backyard pool, neither of which we have ever owned before. I have it inspected and the evaluation was that everything except the SWG was in pretty good shape.
After about a year of noodling the pool's operation, I have a couple questions I'd like some help with.
The original gunite pool was installed in 1957. I'm told that sometime in the 1990s the pool was upgraded with new plaster, coping, and decking, plumbing, solar, SWG and other equipment. After we moved in I replaced the water--Ca was off the charts--and installed a new SWG. I do my own maintenance and verify my water chemistry tests with the local Leslie's. I have two irritating problems:
First, there are LOTS of bubbles coming into the pool from the return ports when solar is on. I'm told that it's probably--not verified--sucking air through the second story relief valve, because the 1 hp pump simply can't move enough water to keep the upper coils and water column full. If that's the case, I'm probably not getting full heat gain from the coils on top. Sounds reasonable, but the solution is a new pump. Anyone had a similar problem? How was it fixed?
Second, if I replace the existing pump with Pentair Intelliflo, I want to be able to have the solar controller set the pump speed based on whether or not water's being pumped to the coils. We have our share of overcast skies and cool days when I don't want to run water thru the solar. At these times, I want the pump to run at minimum speed required for filtering. Pentair seems to have a couple controller options that look to be able to do this speed control. Anyone have experience with their Solarcomm, or Compro controllers doing this?
Finally, I need to integrate control of the Polaris and is boost pump with the Intelliflo. Right now, both pumps are controlled by two rotary timers. Again, any suggestions?
Thanks for the help,
Paul
After about a year of noodling the pool's operation, I have a couple questions I'd like some help with.
The original gunite pool was installed in 1957. I'm told that sometime in the 1990s the pool was upgraded with new plaster, coping, and decking, plumbing, solar, SWG and other equipment. After we moved in I replaced the water--Ca was off the charts--and installed a new SWG. I do my own maintenance and verify my water chemistry tests with the local Leslie's. I have two irritating problems:
First, there are LOTS of bubbles coming into the pool from the return ports when solar is on. I'm told that it's probably--not verified--sucking air through the second story relief valve, because the 1 hp pump simply can't move enough water to keep the upper coils and water column full. If that's the case, I'm probably not getting full heat gain from the coils on top. Sounds reasonable, but the solution is a new pump. Anyone had a similar problem? How was it fixed?
Second, if I replace the existing pump with Pentair Intelliflo, I want to be able to have the solar controller set the pump speed based on whether or not water's being pumped to the coils. We have our share of overcast skies and cool days when I don't want to run water thru the solar. At these times, I want the pump to run at minimum speed required for filtering. Pentair seems to have a couple controller options that look to be able to do this speed control. Anyone have experience with their Solarcomm, or Compro controllers doing this?
Finally, I need to integrate control of the Polaris and is boost pump with the Intelliflo. Right now, both pumps are controlled by two rotary timers. Again, any suggestions?
Thanks for the help,
Paul
