Re-plump equipment pad

[Ksjrb03]

Hello,
Our pool build is complete, but we are fighting through some issues with leaking plaster job and plumbing. I sure wish I found this site before we started this long painful build process. I will start a build thread and post pictures once we get this all completed, hopefully soon. Today I am asking for help with plumbing design, which doesn't seem to be our builders strong point. Our pool is 16x32 (15k gallons) with an overflow 6x6 spa. He has changed up the piping a couple times already, here is a diagram of how it sits today.



As you can see I have a separate pool and spa pump, and the spa pump is not filtered and goes through the heater. This seems like an issue to me, I would hate to plug the heater up. The builder is coming soon to add the SWG, this seems like a good time to have him re-plumb the system in a way that makes more sense to me, and will work with automation I plan to add in the future. In my design I would run off of one pump, filter all water, and be able to heat the pool directly rather than heat the spa and use the overflow to heat the pool (which we did this weekend and seemed to work ok).



Please let me know if this re-do looks ok, this is our first pool and I have zero pool experience aside what I have learned on this site. I will need to order some check valves and three port valves, and want to run this design by you guys and gals first. Thanks in advance for your time.

 

[jblizzle]

Welcome to TFP!!!

Both setups are pretty typical. In the first one, there is definitely no need for both to be 2HP ... the pool pump could be much smaller.

Your second drawing looks pretty typical of a single pump setup. There is no need for the check valve after the heater with a SWG.

If you are going to give a pump back, make the one you keep a 2-speed ... will save you a lot of electricity by running on low for filtration and high for the spa.

Personally, I would ditch the booster pump and pressure cleaner also ... why need to run 2 pumps to clean the water when there are suction and pressure cleaners that only need one pump or robots that are independent.

 

[Ksjrb03]

Welcome to TFP!!!

Both setups are pretty typical. In the first one, there is definitely no need for both to be 2HP ... the pool pump could be much smaller.

Your second drawing looks pretty typical of a single pump setup. There is no need for the check valve after the heater with a SWG.

If you are going to give a pump back, make the one you keep a 2-speed ... will save you a lot of electricity by running on low for filtration and high for the spa.

Personally, I would ditch the booster pump and pressure cleaner also ... why need to run 2 pumps to clean the water when there are suction and pressure cleaners that only need one pump or robots that are independent.

Thank you for the info. I thought I read somewhere that there should be a check valve before the swg to keep chlorine from flowing back to the heater and filter, good to know I can eliminate that one. I totally agree about removing the booster pump and using a robot, like I said before I wish I would have found this site sooner! A robot will be in my future, for now I have the kreepy legend which seems to do a good enough job but look forward to getting rid of down the line. I still need to have this conversation with the builder, right now I am trying to get my ducks in a row before that conversation. I would like to trade him both 2HP pumps back for a dual speed or VS pump, we will see how that goes....

So it is common to have spa water run unfiltered through a heater?

 

[jblizzle]

You would want a check valve for a trichlor tablet feeder, but a SWG will not generate unless there is water flow, so no way for it to back up into the heater.

There are some spa setups that have suction and return lines in a spa that are run my the circulation/filtration pump. With a separate pump that has its own suction line that runs the jets. Now that I think about it, usually the heater would be on the filtration pump I think the jet pump would ONLY be for the jets.

So, yeah the first drawing is a bit off from nominal.