Hello All,
Sorry that I've not been around to help you guys out, or made any posts for quite sometime d/t my medical condition, not that I've not thought of you fine gals and guys often though. LOL After reading this you may not want my kind of help ever again anyway. I've been wanting to hard plumb my pool for 3 years now, but just never felt well enough to mess with it, but decided during this year's opening, and whether I was well enough, or not, I was going to try to tackle the task by myself.
When it was all said and done the actual issue ended up being something very weird that I thought was certainly worth bringing to other's attention. While you're reading my story see if you can figure out, before I tell you, what caused my problem. I personally had never even considered it, so if something that makes me feel totally stupid right now for not considering it as the potential problem prevents someone else from going through the same thing then I'm more than happy to share it with you. Also, feel free to laugh if you want to because I did later on, LOL but believe me when I say it was much later on.
Here's my story:
My pump sits very close to my pool (like 3-4' apart), so I had anticipated that there could be some major flow issues d/t the close location, and the need to use so many 90's in order to hard plumb it that close, but I thought I'd try it anyway.
After 3 days out in the hot sun in my wheelchair, I finally get every thing cut, and put together DRY, and it looked great. Day 4: I finally start securing the connectors, gluing the pieces together, and everything lines up beautifully. Finally I flip on the pump, the pump basket fills with water, primes, and appears to start filling the filter. I check and no water is coming out of the return. My first thought was, well poo, just as I had anticipated all those 90's have now messed up the flow. So with hacksaw in hand, I roll over to my 4 days of work, and start cutting.
Since the hard plumb apparently wasn't going to work, I still wanted to try to at least leave the cutoffs on it, and then just connect the hoses below that, so that's what I did. I finally got the hoses hooked back up and thought to myself, thank goodness, I'm finally finished. I flip on the pump, and yet again No Water is coming out of the return. Only this time, the hoses I had just connected on the return side after just a few seconds of the pump being turned on start popping off under the pressure. The suction side hoses were holding steady.
With water flying everywhere, I use my new installed cutoffs
which I was thrilled to have at that point, get the hoses put back on and tighten them down tighter thinking I just hadn't tightened then well enough the 1st time. I again flip on the pump, still there is no water coming out of the return, and the hoses on the return side blow off again. (I was ready for them this time though so less water got wasted).
I thought to myself, "This is just plain crazy, what the heck could be causing this?"
I check all the connection again, tighten them all down again, ensure everything is hooked up correctly, etc., and just sit there in the scorching heat, sweat flowing into my eyes, on now day 5, about to cry, with a very confused look on my face.
I figured I might as well put the entire return side back to the way I'd used it before, and hoped it would finally work correctly then. So I unhooked the hoses on that side, started unscrewing the return connector, and my newly installed cutoff. While doing this the ring that the connector screwed into on the outside of the pool starts coming loose too, and was leaking a lot of water, so I tighten it back up, and reach inside the pool where the eye screws on to make sure it's not coming loose too, or about to fall into the pool.
Folks, I kid you not, the stupid return eye had somehow flipped over during my pipe instillation, and the solid sides of it was completely blocking the entire opening, and wouldn't allow any water to come out of the return. I would have never guessed in a million years that this would have been what was causing my problem the entire time. So if you have no water coming out of your return line you might want to check your return eye because instead of it just sitting in there like it's suppose to, it very well could be looking all around trying to see what your doing on the outside lol. I have no idea whether my hard plumb would or wouldn't have worked all because of this weird occurrence.
I would still like to hard plumb my system, but it won't be anytime soon. I hope my story helps others to possibly avoid a complete cut out of their hard work for a very easy fix. Have a Wonderful Night!!
Sorry that I've not been around to help you guys out, or made any posts for quite sometime d/t my medical condition, not that I've not thought of you fine gals and guys often though. LOL After reading this you may not want my kind of help ever again anyway. I've been wanting to hard plumb my pool for 3 years now, but just never felt well enough to mess with it, but decided during this year's opening, and whether I was well enough, or not, I was going to try to tackle the task by myself.
When it was all said and done the actual issue ended up being something very weird that I thought was certainly worth bringing to other's attention. While you're reading my story see if you can figure out, before I tell you, what caused my problem. I personally had never even considered it, so if something that makes me feel totally stupid right now for not considering it as the potential problem prevents someone else from going through the same thing then I'm more than happy to share it with you. Also, feel free to laugh if you want to because I did later on, LOL but believe me when I say it was much later on.
Here's my story:
My pump sits very close to my pool (like 3-4' apart), so I had anticipated that there could be some major flow issues d/t the close location, and the need to use so many 90's in order to hard plumb it that close, but I thought I'd try it anyway.
After 3 days out in the hot sun in my wheelchair, I finally get every thing cut, and put together DRY, and it looked great. Day 4: I finally start securing the connectors, gluing the pieces together, and everything lines up beautifully. Finally I flip on the pump, the pump basket fills with water, primes, and appears to start filling the filter. I check and no water is coming out of the return. My first thought was, well poo, just as I had anticipated all those 90's have now messed up the flow. So with hacksaw in hand, I roll over to my 4 days of work, and start cutting.
Since the hard plumb apparently wasn't going to work, I still wanted to try to at least leave the cutoffs on it, and then just connect the hoses below that, so that's what I did. I finally got the hoses hooked back up and thought to myself, thank goodness, I'm finally finished. I flip on the pump, and yet again No Water is coming out of the return. Only this time, the hoses I had just connected on the return side after just a few seconds of the pump being turned on start popping off under the pressure. The suction side hoses were holding steady.
With water flying everywhere, I use my new installed cutoffs
which I was thrilled to have at that point, get the hoses put back on and tighten them down tighter thinking I just hadn't tightened then well enough the 1st time. I again flip on the pump, still there is no water coming out of the return, and the hoses on the return side blow off again. (I was ready for them this time though so less water got wasted).I thought to myself, "This is just plain crazy, what the heck could be causing this?"
I check all the connection again, tighten them all down again, ensure everything is hooked up correctly, etc., and just sit there in the scorching heat, sweat flowing into my eyes, on now day 5, about to cry, with a very confused look on my face. I figured I might as well put the entire return side back to the way I'd used it before, and hoped it would finally work correctly then. So I unhooked the hoses on that side, started unscrewing the return connector, and my newly installed cutoff
. While doing this the ring that the connector screwed into on the outside of the pool starts coming loose too, and was leaking a lot of water, so I tighten it back up, and reach inside the pool where the eye screws on to make sure it's not coming loose too, or about to fall into the pool. Folks, I kid you not, the stupid return eye had somehow flipped over during my pipe instillation, and the solid sides of it was completely blocking the entire opening, and wouldn't allow any water to come out of the return. I would have never guessed in a million years that this would have been what was causing my problem the entire time. So if you have no water coming out of your return line you might want to check your return eye because instead of it just sitting in there like it's suppose to, it very well could be looking all around trying to see what your doing on the outside lol. I have no idea whether my hard plumb would or wouldn't have worked all because of this weird occurrence.
I would still like to hard plumb my system, but it won't be anytime soon. I hope my story helps others to possibly avoid a complete cut out of their hard work for a very easy fix. Have a Wonderful Night!!
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