Plumbing upgrade

[East_Akl_Neil]

Hi All

I hope that you are enjoying your swimming season. Its a bit too chilly here for swiming so I've been using the downtime to plan on installing a home made solar heater. And due to the skimer having a crack, and a suction leak, I've decided to replumb everything while I'm at it, but have a few questions first.

Hopefully my HTML table gives an indication of what I'm talking about.

The pump pad is at the botom of the pic, in a garage, not shown. There is a slope from the return end towards the debree end. I'm not sure what the piping size is under ground as yet, but above ground it is a mix of 32 & 40mm. I'm going to replace it all with 50mm to bring it up to current best pratice.

Skimmer relocation.
Due to the skimmer having a crack along the line where the leaf basket sits, I think that I might replace it while im working on things, and due to a suction leak in the line near them skimmer, I might as well replace the entire suction line while I am at it too. So the questions are, should I relocate the skimmer while I am at it? Should I have one or 2 skimmers? I ask as the natural place for the debree to migrate to is on the opposide side of the pool than where the skimmer is now.

Suction Pipe.
When laying the suction pipe, how shoildmit be layed? Should it be level, incline towards the pump, or incline towards the skimmer? If I do it right, it should fill the pipe when I fill the pool to just before the pump where it rises to the pump with no air pockets.

Return
Currently the return is the same side of the skimmer. Its height is also the same as the skimmer, which means that when the pool water is low, the return is above water level, and when the water is high the return is below water level. Given that while I'm replacing the rest of the plumbing, and the current return is fixed in direction, I might as well replace that as well. So should I fit the new return lower in the pool than it is now so that it is always under water, or should I just leave it where it is?

	Debree​
Skimmer
Return

Thanks in advance for your excellent advice. Neil.

 

[bobodaclown]

Hello Neil,
Not sure what the Debree is, if that is where you're thinking about putting the new skimmer, if that is where things tend to collect it should work.

What about putting in two returns, opposite sides of the corners of the pool, to get a circular flow going. It's not a bad idea to increase your piping size if you're going to be working on it anyways.

 

[East_Akl_Neil]

Most of the debree is just the general stuff that ends up in the pool. Leaves, bits of paper, pool toys and most things that keep floating, which is why I was not really being specific about it.

Where would the returns best be placed? Top left and bottom right as in the pic, or somewhere else?

How about the number of skimmers? Stick with one, or fit 2?

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[East_Akl_Neil]

Any other feedback before I start making concrete plans?