Hi folks. Just thought I would share what turned out to be a multi-day PITA on a two year old pool with very hard prime, losing prime over night and an obvious suction air leak. I have 100ft uphill run to the equipment, so spring opening restart is never super fun, but this year, it took me two days to come up with an approach that worked. In the end I solved it by switching the suction side to skimmer only, plugging one skimmer, and building a PVC contraption to directly attach a hose to push the air out of the lines. See attached pic. (Yes I tried a DrainKing first, but it exploded and so I was nervous about continuing that approach. LOL.)
This worked great at forcing air out of the lines. Once it starts to catch prime, I open the second skimmer plug and then SLOWLY cracked the main drain to get the air out little by little.
After all that, a couple weeks later, my pool stopped holding prime overnight. Our pool service guys discovered pump running dry and very hot. I was lucky it didn't do any lasting damage, so I dodged that bullet. That said, the pool guys spent two hours trying to get it to prime and replacing O-rings, checking unions and everything, and could not get it going. I finally got off work and showed them my priming trick which worked but I still had air in system, and it didn't hold prime the next day.
Another few hours of scratching my head, soapy water, listening for air leaks and cleaning and lubing o-rings and I discover that the suction side Jandy valve was sucking air through the little hole in the stem where the knob that secures the handle to the stem screws in. What??? I found one dude on YouTube where you can see my exact problem which is a small crack/failure in that part. He said "this is a thing" and something Jandy has never addressed apparently. Not great for a two year old part. That valve gets the most use and the service guys could have gooned on it a bit at some point, I suppose.
Anyway, it was a tricky one and I thought I would share back to group here in case it is helpful. I solved it for the short term by squirting shoe goo into the hole in the stem hole while running. The suction pulled the goo down into the hole and stopped the leak immediately. Meanwhile I am ordering a new valve for parts since that is cheaper than ordering the part itself!
Side question: Have you guys had luck with knock-off versions of the diverter valve repair kit or should I stick with factory? The knock-offs are WAY cheaper. Who knows, maybe they are better built!
This worked great at forcing air out of the lines. Once it starts to catch prime, I open the second skimmer plug and then SLOWLY cracked the main drain to get the air out little by little.
After all that, a couple weeks later, my pool stopped holding prime overnight. Our pool service guys discovered pump running dry and very hot. I was lucky it didn't do any lasting damage, so I dodged that bullet. That said, the pool guys spent two hours trying to get it to prime and replacing O-rings, checking unions and everything, and could not get it going. I finally got off work and showed them my priming trick which worked but I still had air in system, and it didn't hold prime the next day.
Another few hours of scratching my head, soapy water, listening for air leaks and cleaning and lubing o-rings and I discover that the suction side Jandy valve was sucking air through the little hole in the stem where the knob that secures the handle to the stem screws in. What??? I found one dude on YouTube where you can see my exact problem which is a small crack/failure in that part. He said "this is a thing" and something Jandy has never addressed apparently. Not great for a two year old part. That valve gets the most use and the service guys could have gooned on it a bit at some point, I suppose.
Anyway, it was a tricky one and I thought I would share back to group here in case it is helpful. I solved it for the short term by squirting shoe goo into the hole in the stem hole while running. The suction pulled the goo down into the hole and stopped the leak immediately. Meanwhile I am ordering a new valve for parts since that is cheaper than ordering the part itself!
Side question: Have you guys had luck with knock-off versions of the diverter valve repair kit or should I stick with factory? The knock-offs are WAY cheaper. Who knows, maybe they are better built!
Glad you were able to ID that air leak. Good job. 