I'm trying to help out a friend. He bought a house with a half-in ground vinyl lined pool. Of course, the pool was closed when he purchased it. (you can see where this is going).
He paid someone to open the pool for him, and at open the vendor suggested that there might be a problem in the lines was there was some water in the skimmer that shouldn't have been there. He tried filling the pool, but it kept failing to fill above the return line. Pool vendor suggested that there is a leak and he wouldn't have time to do that kind of extensive work until June. Enter me.
I opened the panel behind the pool and low and behold, yea...there was a leak - because when closing, the prior owner disconnected the return, and sealed from there. I suppose that since this a very small and simple setup (approx 6K-10K gallons by my estimate) with a single skimmer and single return, they used the return to act a drain and keep the water level from overflowing the pool. I reconnected the piping, filled the pool the rest of the way and presto. We were on to cleaning out all the gunk, algae and god knows what else.
And then...
I noticed that the pump was having trouble priming. Despite multiple bucket loads of water, it's still just dribbling in. I cleaned the filter and that improved things, but the pump basket is still not completely full, and seems to require intervention whenever the pump is off and it restarts by timer. Right now, we have it running 24x7 since we just started a SLAM. Any thoughts on the cause? I didn't think a dirty filter could be it...although cleaning it did solve some of the issue. It's a Hydrotools Cartridge filter (#70152), and a Hydrotools pump, model 71906. There's a Hayward chlorinator as well. I turned off the valves to the heater to keep things super simple - one line in, one line out.
Thanks.
He paid someone to open the pool for him, and at open the vendor suggested that there might be a problem in the lines was there was some water in the skimmer that shouldn't have been there. He tried filling the pool, but it kept failing to fill above the return line. Pool vendor suggested that there is a leak and he wouldn't have time to do that kind of extensive work until June. Enter me.
I opened the panel behind the pool and low and behold, yea...there was a leak - because when closing, the prior owner disconnected the return, and sealed from there. I suppose that since this a very small and simple setup (approx 6K-10K gallons by my estimate) with a single skimmer and single return, they used the return to act a drain and keep the water level from overflowing the pool. I reconnected the piping, filled the pool the rest of the way and presto. We were on to cleaning out all the gunk, algae and god knows what else.
And then...
I noticed that the pump was having trouble priming. Despite multiple bucket loads of water, it's still just dribbling in. I cleaned the filter and that improved things, but the pump basket is still not completely full, and seems to require intervention whenever the pump is off and it restarts by timer. Right now, we have it running 24x7 since we just started a SLAM. Any thoughts on the cause? I didn't think a dirty filter could be it...although cleaning it did solve some of the issue. It's a Hydrotools Cartridge filter (#70152), and a Hydrotools pump, model 71906. There's a Hayward chlorinator as well. I turned off the valves to the heater to keep things super simple - one line in, one line out.
Thanks.
