I bought a house with a pool - What the??! (for fun post)

[Revlus]

So for fun, I'm posting this pic. Bought a house, wife swims.. so got a pool.

I also got 5 pumps, a pool frog, a bum SWG, an old Polaris EOS system, for which 'some' things work, a heat pump (seems to work! woohoo!), and a mongo sand filter. The booster pump is a for a polaris cleaner that the previous owners took with them!

Then I have the wife that says day of opening "why can't we swim in it yet and have 90 degree water?!"

Seriously though... Looking forward to this new 'hobby' and thank goodness this forum is here with so many 'givers' of knowledge. It's saving my bacon.... and I can't wait to get our young'ins in there to make it all worth it.

The pump on the left is the filter pump. Already replaced the 12 year old one that just died a few days ago when opening the pool (our first season at this house/pool).

The next pump is the spa booster..
The next two (black and gold) are for the 'water features'. Each just pump to a bar of mini-jets (cascade fountain?).. probably go 4 feet up in the air and 4 feet into the pool. Kinda fun I guess. Kinda noisy. The gold pump is making a nice shrieking noise. Probably almost dead.

Then the booster pump for the non-existent polaris... *sigh*



So almost all of it is 12 yrs old with little to no maintenance done.... should be a piece of cake! *cough*

 

[jblizzle]

That does look like quite the hobby to deal with ... so much pumps!!!

No use for the Frog. Not sure what an EOS system is.

Likely you could consolidate some of those pumps for the water features? How many jets? Wonder if they could work off 1 pump or even just off the main filter pump (although you would lose the ability to run the spa and features at the same time).

I would just forget about the booster cleaner and pump and get an electric robot I think.

 

[woodyp]

Gotta wonder if all that running dims the lights......

 

[CJadamec]

One or two VS pumps in there would clean that whole mess up and save a ton on electric usage....

 

[Revlus]

Yea, I'm with all of you on the electricity/efficiency savings.... I love the home automation thing... LED lights, fix all the leaky air gaps in the house, yell at the kids to turn the lights off when they leave the room, etc... Will look into pool solar (if I have space to put anything that doesn't look aweful)... so would love to make this pool more efficient and cost less.

If you search on "Polaris EOS 3" you can still find some old documents and descriptions out there. It was a good automation system for its time apparently, but was also installed in this house near to when it stopped being in production (from what the pool's builder tells me).

It apparently controlled everything very well with the automated Jandy valves. SWG, Heat pump, spa water, lights, remote station in the house, etc.

There are some problems, but it turns on and off the pumps well enough for now. The jandy valves I have to handle manually for the most part unless I want to start tracking down where the short circuits are.


So this is what I was thinking, with future Pentair or Hayward automation in mind:

- Filter pump - Change this to variable speed pump (old Polaris SWG not working right now, but will put something new in this year I hope, that'll work with future automation)
- Spa jet pump - Keep it. Won't be used a lot, but I love the power it gives to the jets.
- Two 1HP water feature pumps - Change this to the one current Pentair 2HP Whisperflo that is currently my filter pump (its brand new!) Will 2HP replace 1HP well enough?
- Ditch the booster pump and go with the robot as suggested above. If I ditch it.... just blow out and seal off all the ends?
- Ditch the frog.
- Install a new SWG where the old one and the frog is located.

Future:
Ditch the Polaris EOS and go full automation, and further clean up the mess.

Thoughts? What would YOU do?

 

[jblizzle]

That looks like a pretty good plan. It would take a little more investigation to ensure whether a 2hp pump would give you enough flow to replace the two one horsepower pumps.

 

[CJadamec]

Keep it simple and keep it all the same brand if you are going automation.

I like Pentair so I'll use that as an example,

Easy touch automation
A single intelliflo pump for the main pool/spa pump
A single intelliflo pump for both water features, you could reuse the 2hp pump but the intelliflo will use about 1/3 or less of the electricity of the 2-hp pump and be quieter and do a better job.

ditch the booster pump and get a robot

Intellichlor IC60 SWG cell (we recommend a salt cell that is for at least 2x the size of your pool to prolong time between cell replacements and shorten run time)

There will be a bit of plumbing and maybe moving of some valves.

You can keep the spa pump but with two intelliflos and the right valveing you wouldn't need it anymore. Again the intelliflo pumps will run much quieter and give you the same if not better performance.