Heat Pump Plumbing and Pressure Drop Questions

[EricDu]

Hayward 1.5 hp pump, sand filter, RayPak 125k BTU heat pump.

Disconnecting the input from the heat pump and directing it straight into the pool gives a filter pressure of 10 psi.

Running the pump with the heat pump connected gives a pressure of 15psi.

Previously, without the heat pump, the running pressure was about 11-12 psi.

So, by the looks of things the heat pump, and the additional fittings on the output to the return line adds a 3-4 psi of back pressure.

I'll try to get pictures up, but I admit my plumbing of the heat pump looks attrocious. Too many elbows and fittings. Reason being is that no one seems to stock the LASCO unions required for the heat pump. So I had to frankenstein together the bits from the installation the previous owner of the heat pump had.

Now, I was flabbergasted to find the original installation kit in the bottom of the heat pump. SO I now have the required fittings gratis.

Would it be worth the time, energy, and importantly, money, required to replumb the heat pump better?
Would use 2 inch pipe and fittings everywhere except for the transition from the filter pipe and the transition to the pool return and add two 2 inch isolation ball valves, a 2 inch bypass ball valve, and a check valve.

 

[kimkats]

I am not sure but I hope a picture will be helpful and this will give you a bump in hopes someone who does know will see it.

 

[EricDu]

Thanks kimkats.

Any resource that gives rules of thumb and best practices for plumbing various pool components would be great.

 

[kimkats]

photo bucket has block linking. Do a search and see what has been going on with them. We are hoping they back off. Until then try fliker or such.

 

[pooldv]

Photobucket made a huge policy change recently not to allow 3rd party hosting of images anymore. So far, members have started using Imgur and Flickr but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on what is best yet.

A heater will increase the head pressure in the plumbing for sure. Heaters should be plumbed with a bypass for a few reasons.
You can bypass the heater when the heater isn't in use for better efficiency.
You can winterize (drain) the heater and leave the pump running for folks who don't close their pools in winter.
You can bypass the heater when pH is low (below 7.2) during acid bath, ascorbic acid treatment, scale treatment, etc so that the heat exchanger isn't damaged by low pH.
You can bypass the heater when it needs to be serviced or replaced.

There are pics of my heater and bypass here, post Re: pooldv pool build

 

[EricDu]

Photobucket made a huge policy change recently not to allow 3rd party hosting of images anymore. So far, members have started using Imgur and Flickr but there doesn't seem to be a consensus on what is best yet.

So I discovered that copying and pasting the IMG link text from photobucket was successful. Seems they just want to make sure that the link to photobucket is under the image.

What I did was to get it working ASAP. The pool went green between the time I disconnected everything and finally got it plumbed as-is.