A&A style 1 floor system heads, reasonable cost high quality replacement o-rings?

[lightandvideo]

Does anyone know of a source for reasonable cost high quality replacement square o-rings for A&A style 1 floor system heads?

(We are in process of buying a house and overhauling the pool and we are replacing 30x A&A style 1 floor system heads out of warranty, the o-rings are in 1 piece but they are 20 years old and I was thinking it would be wise the replace the old o-rings with the new heads, cheapest price I am finding online is $10/ea, I don’t want to cut corners but I must not be alone thinking this is insane to pay $300 for 30x o-rings?!)

Obviously the A&A OEM o-rings are impressive quality since they haven’t disintegrated after 20 years underwater. I don’t want to spend a dollar to save a dime and I would rather pay $10/ea than use anything with questionable quality, but there must be premium quality made in USA or Europe compatible o-rings for a more reasonable price?

 

[Catanzaro]

Light & Video:

Welcome to the forum and please add your signature. I have only seen these in a few pools, and IMO because of the low demand (when they work, they are great and my friend cut his out during a plumbing swap), that I do not believe you will find many companies that produce the O-Rings and what you are looking for. The company who makes these charges for a reason, etc., and I believe that you will have to purchase the OEM product. Maybe someone else has these, but like I stated, even in NJ all the pools I have seen, only 1%-2% of the population has these installed.

Your pool must be quite large to have 30 of these. I would purchase OEM and not fuss with them as any aftermarket will cost you more time and labor to swap these out.

 

[lightandvideo]

Thanks for your quick reply! Yes I was expecting probably need to bite the bullet and order the OEM o-rings, but wanted to check for advice here first! ($300 is insane cost for a small bag of rubber o-rings!), its my first time replacing floor heads so spending over $1600 on a bunch of plastic heads and rubber o-rings is a big shock for me, haha hopefully they last a long time!

It is a large IG pool/spa with grotto, waterfall, slide, approx 30k gallons w/4x pumps and 2x filters, Pool is approx 20 years old with original pebbletech needing resurfacing, concrete rocks/grotto waterfall also needed some repairs and re-staining so we are doing a full renovation on the rocks/grotto, replacing the old plastic slide with new rock feature with concrete slide, repairing the grotto waterfall, and resurfacing the pool/spa with new pebble, also upgrading to LED pool/spa lighting and upgrading the skimmer pump to 3HP IntelliFlo VSF, also adding IC60 SWG, I am learning a lot here and very grateful to find this great resource, the TFP community is definitely helping me grow my knowledge as we take on this major renovation project!

Thanks again, Have a great weekend & Happy 4th!

 

[Pool_Medic]

If you have a local hydraulic supplier near you they can get those o-rings at a fraction of that cost.

 

[lightandvideo]

If you have a local hydraulic supplier near you they can get those o-rings at a fraction of that cost.

Thanks for your reply! That’s what I was thinking, I seriously doubt if A&A manufactures these o-rings in-house, so there must be another source for the identical units without the crazy mark-up,

Even the best quality o-ring this size can’t cost more than $1/ea to produce!

I will probably just order the OEM units if I can’t locate identical alternates, but if anyone here knows who manufactures for A&A and has the identical o-ring specs used for the OEM units???

They must be available somewhere for a fraction of the cost, I looked on Grainger’s site and saw there were so many different o-ring materials and hardness variations (soft/hard, PTFE, buna, viton, silicone, viton core, silicone core, etc) also all of the units I saw on grainger’s site were round and the A&A OEM units are square,

Whatever the OEM specs are they do last a long time but I’m going to give this thread a couple more days to see if maybe someone here knows who A&A buys the OEM units from and can share the name of the vendor with exact specs or part number, Thanks again!

 

[lightandvideo]

If you have a local hydraulic supplier near you they can get those o-rings at a fraction of that cost.

I just did another search on eBay and found a seller offering “replacement” A&A style 1 o-rings with volume discount avail $5.50/ea for 7+ units with free shipping, I just messaged the seller to confirm if these are genuine OEM units, and to confirm lowest price they will do for 30x units, maybe they know the exact vendor/specs used for the OEM units and are selling on eBay with huge savings! $5.50/ea still seems a little high but hopefully I can save $150 bucks on the order! (I will probably order one of the OEM units so I can compare OEM size/hardness/feel to the eBay replacement units)

 

[Dodger]

Is this what you are looking for? $9.95 right now.

Style 1 Cleaning Head Square O-Ring - Pentair In-Floor(A&A) | 236950

A&A Style 1 Cleaning Head Square O-Ring (516664) Genuine Replacement Parts for A&A Manufacturing Pool Cleaning Systems. Ships Free to U.S.

www.poolinfloor.com

Edit: sorry, I missed that you are buying 30 of them.

 

[proavia]

I don't have type 1 pop-ups, but any replacement heads I have received have had a new o-ring included. Have you checked with A&A to see if the o-ring is included? At this 3rd party site, the o-ring is installed in their product pics:
A&A Style 1 High Flow Pop Up Head (White)

When you install the new pop ups, use pool lube on the o-rings.

Is the party you are buying the house from the original owner of the pool? If so, have them submit a warranty claim. If they aren't the original pool owner, hopefully you got a discount on the purchase price to help fund your pool parts replacement cost.

 

[lightandvideo]

I don't have type 1 pop-ups, but any replacement heads I have received have had a new o-ring included. Have you checked with A&A to see if the o-ring is included? At this 3rd party site, the o-ring is installed in their product pics:
A&A Style 1 High Flow Pop Up Head (White)

When you install the new pop ups, use pool lube on the o-rings.

Is the party you are buying the house from the original owner of the pool? If so, have them submit a warranty claim. If they aren't the original pool owner, hopefully you got a discount on the purchase price to help fund your pool parts replacement cost.

Haha, you are correct! I just called A&A customer service and they confirmed the new heads do ship with o-rings included! Thanks so much for your post, this phone call saved me $300!

Yes, I already did some research and ordered 5.3oz Boss 820 silicone based pool lube for the new o-ring installation,

The issue with the warranty, A&A offers lifetime warranty to the original homeowner but they need to have handled the original system design for warranty to be active. The original pool plumber that installed the floor system 20+ years ago has passed away and no longer in business, so the seller doesn’t know who to call and he isn’t sure if A&A handled the system design.

Since we are buying the house as-is and I have asked the seller about the warranty option several times, he seems to want me to take care of replacing the heads out of pocket, and I don’t want to risk damaging the relationship inconveniencing him, also it seems like it might be worth just paying for all new heads to replace everything during our renovation to avoid ongoing headaches replacing just some of the current heads with warranty claim for the non functional heads, (but even some free spare units would be great to have, at $45/ea x 30 units the costs add up fast!)

I was also planning to replace the mixed grey/white heads currently installed with all beige color heads that will match the new sand color pebble we are installing, but I’m thinking even if we can get some of the current heads replaced for free white/grey spare units with warranty exchange, this would be awesome to have some spare units avail since the warranty will be void after we complete the home purchase this is our last chance to attempt warranty claim before the sale is finalized,

We are completing some structural repairs on the house and completing the pool renovation before the sale is finalized so the warranty should still be active as long as A&A did the original system design and if the address/owner is registered in their system.

I will probably go ahead and order the new beige color heads so we can swap out everything during our renovation, but I will ask the seller to call A&A customer service to see if they will honor the warranty claim on the broken units to get us some free spare heads, (especially now we know these will also include free spare o-rings worth $10/ea haha!)

I will also have him ask if they can send out beige color replacement heads to match our new pebble, I guess it can’t hurt to ask!

 

[lightandvideo]

I don't have type 1 pop-ups, but any replacement heads I have received have had a new o-ring included. Have you checked with A&A to see if the o-ring is included? At this 3rd party site, the o-ring is installed in their product pics:
A&A Style 1 High Flow Pop Up Head (White)

When you install the new pop ups, use pool lube on the o-rings.

Is the party you are buying the house from the original owner of the pool? If so, have them submit a warranty claim. If they aren't the original pool owner, hopefully you got a discount on the purchase price to help fund your pool parts replacement cost.

Also side note, I just donated $50 to TFP in appreciation for this awesome resource, thanks again everyone for your support and advice, wishing everyone a safe & fun 4th of July!

 

[proavia]

Thanks for the donation to TFP!

I would think the original owner would try helping you out. They can call A&A to see if there is a record of the install.

If you do decide to go down the warranty avenue.... just return ALL the heads. If they haven't been replaced in several years then they are close to wearing out anyway. On warranty claims A&A has always been good. I call, they charge my credit card, they ship them, I remove the old and install the new, I ship used heads back, they credit my credit card. My only out of pocket is the return shipping - < $10.

Whichever route you take, remember the socket the pop-up fits into also has a small bezel that shows - so choose your pop-up color wisely. ?

 

[lightandvideo]

Thanks for the donation to TFP!

I would think the original owner would try helping you out. They can call A&A to see if there is a record of the install.

If you do decide to go down the warranty avenue.... just return ALL the heads. If they haven't been replaced in several years then they are close to wearing out anyway. On warranty claims A&A has always been good. I call, they charge my credit card, they ship them, I remove the old and install the new, I ship used heads back, they credit my credit card. My only out of pocket is the return shipping - < $10.

Whichever route you take, remember the socket the pop-up fits into also has a small bezel that shows - so choose your pop-up color wisely. ?

Thanks! Yes I pulled all of the old heads out of the pool and spa, and also found a few additional broken units in the garage, so we have 38x old heads, hopefully we can exchange these for new spare units under warranty, since the warranty will definitely be void after the house sale is completed spare units will be great to have around in a few years!

I found an online dealer with fair price for the new replacement heads around $44/ea and free shipping, so I placed the order yesterday for 30x HF heads and 2x LF heads beige color,

(it turned out I miscounted and we actually have 31x heads total on our system, so I ordered what we needed + 1 additional spare HF unit)

The sockets we have look sort of white faded/dingy color, so the socket rings will be somewhat visible with the sand color pebble, but not too bad. I think the beige heads will blend in a lot better with the sand color pebble than the old white/grey heads I removed, and the sockets won’t be highly visible.

Original peddle color transitioned from sand color in shallow areas to tahoe blue in the deep areas, the original heads seemed to be white in shallow areas, grey in deep areas, and all of the heads were highly visible. We are doing all sand color pebble shallow/deep for our renovation, so I think switching to beige color heads will blend a lot better and will be much less visible.

...Now hopefully we get lucky and have A&A warranty exchange on the old heads, and if we get really lucky maybe they will replace with new beige color heads! If that works out we will have enough spares to replace all the heads again in the future, either way now we ordered what we need to complete the renovation ...and at least I didn’t need to buy additional 31x o-rings! thanks again!

 

[proavia]

Maybe start a remodel thread in Under Construction once you get moved in. We love pictures!

 

[lightandvideo]

Maybe start a remodel thread in Under Construction once you get moved in. We love pictures!

 

[lightandvideo]

Maybe start a remodel thread in Under Construction once you get moved in. We love pictures!

 

[jonpcar]

Wow, that is a STACK of popups...if you end up not being able to use them for trade-ins, etc...you still might consider keeping them for parts. I have these same style 1 heads. When Shasta pools previously owned their own pool stores (before selling out to Leslie’s), they actually used to rebuild these heads (type 1) when you would take one in for replacement under the lifetime warranty for original pool owner.

When Leslie’s took over, they didn’t want their employees to have to mess with that, so the deal was that Shasta still provides the lifetime warranty, but they just provide those original customers with brand new heads rather than trying to fix the old ones. Anyway...it didn’t look that hard when I would watch the “techs” rebuild/retune a head...and as I said, that sure is a pile of “potential” replacement parts.

 

[lightandvideo]

Thanks yes it’s almost a full 5-gallon bucket! If we can’t get them exchanged I will definitely keep them for spare parts, thanks again!

 

[KDpoolguy]

I love the beach entry...boy that’s some equipment pad and grotto! Cool!

I’m coming late to this thread, but as a former A&A Style 1 owner I sympathize with the warranty and cost. I had a retrofit kit for a Turboclean IFCS and my new Style 1 heads did have the square-style gaskets attached. I doubt the rubber lasted 20 years though, mine were deteriorating after just 3 and losing their seal, and A&A just said to add silicone lube every few months to keep them with a good seal. Honestly, why not try a regular round oring? If it’s cheaper. I’d hate to see you spend so much unnecessarily. Do some of the heads still turn? The best price I found was $45/head a few years back and there was one company that offered their own direct replacement for a few dollars cheaper.

I got a lot of grief for maintaining a IFCS in a robot world, but it worked well for my pool. I actually really miss it. My new pool probably wouldn’t work well with an IFCS because my old pool had literally no plants or trees around, and the IFCS does really well with dust and sand-not so much with leaves.

Just for simple discussion sake—Since I haven’t seen it discussed, have you considered removing some, if not all of the IFCS system? In your images I don’t see the IFCS valves. How many zones/valves do you have?

 

[lightandvideo]

Thanks for your message, yes we love the beach entry and excited this will be our private backyard retreat,

Grotto with rebuilt waterfall will look great after the renovation, and our aquascape contractor is rebuilding the original slide with ladder into a new concrete slide with rock steps and retooled plumbing as a major upgrade to the original design,

We are keeping the floor system and we already ordered the replacement heads with included o-rings,

Luckily our neighbor gave us permission to trim back the eucalyptus tree branches that were hanging over our property line and were littering the pool previously, the tree was trimmed back earlier today so hopefully this helps keep the floor system effective, and will help us keep the pool clean!

Before draining the pool some of the heads were working correctly, some were stuck in up position, some were not popping up, and a few heads were missing, it was definitely time to replace all the heads.

I’m still confirming how many zones we have and condition of the valves/gears, but there are 2 separate valves units, planning to open these up next week to inspect the gears. I did find 2 old gear assemblies in the garage so I’m hoping these were replaced recently. Worst case we might need to repair/replace the gear assemblies, but hopefully these have been serviced recently.

Do you have any suggestions on how to inspect and service/maintain the valves and gears?

 

[KDpoolguy]

If you’re doing the scope of work that you’re doing, and committed, good on ya for keeping the system. If there are 2 separate valves, chances are each one is a ‘six-shooter’ (6-port) and usually each port feeds 2-3 heads. I’d recommend they do a pressure check in each zone before you resurface. Last thing you want is a leaky pipe that you could have capped or repaired at this stage. This is the biggest reason for decommissioning these IFCS’s during resurfacing.

The valve gear assemblies are the least expensive maintenance item, but it does depend on the type of valve you have 1) vinyl balls or 2) t-valve. I’ve replaced a couple of each type and it’s a cinch. They last many years, but my valve leaked so I replaced the entire thing and went from balls to t-valve styles.

The 2 areas most likely areas to inspect and thus to fail are the 1) individual t-valves brackets (they break off and need crazy glue/epoxy repairs) and 2) the drop-in gear assembly (the teeth wear down) most likely the outermost gears fail first. Replace the entire assembly with the rebuilt kit at first sign of wear. Replace the o-ring for good measure (comes w/kit) and the hold-down band clamp—is yours a top or side feed valve? Once you get it going we can go over how to dial in the flow, the zone-change speed and such.