Different spill over spa question

[mitch08]

Hey all - Happy 4th!!

I have an interesting question I hope some of you can help with. I dont know why it took me 4 years with a spa attached to a pool to think of it

I understand how the flow of water works pretty well.
Normally when I have a party, I like to leave the spa on. The problem is, when I do this there is no pool filtration going on. After a few hours of dozens of kids jumping around, the water can get cloudy...

So my normal idea would be to return most water to the pool, and just a bit to the spa. So the pool returns are on, and water is being pulled from the pool. This solves all return water issues. It just weakens the spa jets which isnt really a big deal to me.

But this causes a problem heating the spa or keeping it at a desired temp. Because the heater thermostat uses water from the suction side. So therm will see water at 85 or whatever instead of 100. And the heater will remain on. Now because im constantly getting some pool water into the spa, I dont think anyone would boil like a lobster . But it does make it impossible to control properly like when Im in full spa mode.

Sorry for that long winded rant... My question is, how do you keep some filtration in the pool and spa and still control the spa temp if the heater therm works off the suction side water?

Thanks a million for any help or ideas and have a great holiday!

 

[Richard320]

There is no way to do what you want, short of having two pump and heater systems.

 

[mitch08]

There is no way to do what you want, short of having two pump and heater systems.

I was hoping that wouldnt be the answer

Let me ask another question...
What if I keep it in spa mode. But just "crack" the suction a bit?
So there is a small amount of water being pulled from the pool. The jets will be only returning to the spa obviously, so it will create a bit of the waterfall effect. Just slight.

I think this would cause the heater to work mainly off of spa water temps, right?
But is such a small amount of pool suction going to help? Is it really worth doing?
Or is it more realistic to just deal with cloudy water when everyone leaves

Thanks for your help.

 

[Richard320]

What I did, just a few days ago in fact, was leave the spa getting 20% return so it and the pool were the same temp. When the little kids, who like the spa because they can stand up in it, started shivering and insisting they weren't cold, I moved the valves to spa mode and fired off the heater. As it started getting darker, the pool didn't feel so good and everyone ended up in the spa but they were already cleaned off good from swimming for a couple hours already so it didn't matter.

When the parents started telling them to get out, I flipped the valves to draw from the pool and shut off the heat. That emptied the spa of people in a matter of minutes. And then I set the valves to normal and dumped in an extra quart of bleach and let the pump run about an hour. Pool looked perfect the next morning.