Difference between bypass valve and isolation valves?

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I believe I have one big panel. Here's an aerial shot of the house which gives a good idea of the size in comparison to the pool:

Aerial.jpg


I have a pressure gauge built into my system. Would I be able to properly adjust the diverter valve by monitoring the pressure?
 
Do you know the brand of panels? The Heliocol panels usually come in 4 foot wide sections and are either 10 or 12.5 feet tall. I installed 10 of the 12.5' sections for 500 sqft. The recommended flow rate is about 1 GPM / 10 sqft. With my pump, I am likely only getting 40-60 GPM so I am right around the right flow rate to have everything go through the panels. [Flow rates were estimated by Mark (mas985) here on the forums given all my plumbing and pressure details]

From the picture, I do not know the scale, so am not sure how many of what size panels you have. They are likely 4x12.5' and maybe 5 of them? If that is right, yours would only want about 25 GPM {Jason was right to correct me as my system is oversized and can handle the full flow}

The pressure will have to go up some when the solar is engaged as you are adding head loss just in the added pipe length, but you do not want to see a significant rise as that means you are likely forcing too much water through the solar.

What is your current clean non-solar pressure running?

This is a "guess" and not sure how good of one, but I would think a 1-2psi rise when running solar would be fine, but that getting close to 5+ psi rise is likely bad.

It could help some if you add your pool and equipment info as described here:
pool-school/read_before_you_post
 
I'll work to get all my pool information uploaded. The problem is that I bought the house from a flipper that had no experience with pools, so she didn't touch it. I believe all the equipment was installed some 2-3 owners back too.

With the diverter's "Off" tab in the 2 o'clock position, the pressure rises about 3psi (went from 20psi to 23psi). I did not notice any leaks from the solar panels. Hard to tell if they were delivering warm water because it's only 50F outside right now.

It appears to be one big panel. I roughly measured it to be 22ft by 12ft, so 264 sq ft. Here's a close-up picture of one portion:

IMG_0292.jpg
 
I don't remember seeing you say what size pump you have and what size pipes you have?

You want about 1/10th of a GPM for every square foot of panel, so roughly 26 GPM going to the panels. Not that that really answers the question :)
 
JasonLion said:
I don't remember seeing you say what size pump you have and what size pipes you have?

You want about 1/10th of a GPM for every square foot of panel, so roughly 26 GPM going to the panels. Not that that really answers the question :)
Click to expand...

I'll see if I can find the pump size and model tonight. When you say size of pipes, are you looking for the size of the smallest diameter one, or...? Is there a specific pipe I should measure the diameter of?
 
What we really want to know is the diameter of the underground pipes over all/most of their run. Generally this is the same as the diameter of the pipes where they come out of the ground near the equipment pad. If there are pipes of another size at the equipment pad, that is worth mentioning, but not really very important. Short sections of other sizes don't make much difference.
 
It may look like one panel. But in fact I can see the joint in the picture. There should be 4 sections of tubes and then a joint. I bet you have 5 sections that are each about 4 foot wide.

Posted from my Droid with Tapatalk ... sorry if my response is short ;)
 
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