Is it safe to turn off skimmers during vacation?

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I've started my pump plenty of times with the valve only open to main drain. My old pump was a Sta-rite with that big split housing for the impeller, and the new(er) one is a Hayward VS. If you look at it from a plumbing perspective, the water level in the skimmer pipe AND the main drain pipe will be at the same level when the pump is off. I say this as I am currently reworking my pool pluming, and BOTH lines that I have dug up and cut have water up to the same level - underground, but level with the water in the pool itself.

I would love to know why it makes a difference if pulling from the drain line versus the skimmer line at pump startup? The head to get the pump primed should be the same in both cases, in my engineering mind...

I need to consider ways to keep the pool filled when we are out of town, but its not usually been an issue before, as I've never been gone more than a week during summer, and if its anything like the past few summers, I won't lose much water with the solar cover on...
 
jfmorris said:
I would love to know why it makes a difference if pulling from the drain line versus the skimmer line at pump startup?
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It makes no difference, as you saw. The pipes are all equal.

The potential (rare) problem is that the water level is lower than the pump can hold prime, or be able to reprime if it loses power. Turning the skimmers off remove them from the scenario and lowers the risk, but the original problem of burst home plumbing was low risk too.

If its happened 3 times in 3000 days thats darn good odds it won't happen in the days they're away. Before we factor Murphys at least.
 
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jfmorris said:
I've started my pump plenty of times with the valve only open to main drain. My old pump was a Sta-rite with that big split housing for the impeller, and the new(er) one is a Hayward VS. If you look at it from a plumbing perspective, the water level in the skimmer pipe AND the main drain pipe will be at the same level when the pump is off. I say this as I am currently reworking my pool pluming, and BOTH lines that I have dug up and cut have water up to the same level - underground, but level with the water in the pool itself.

I would love to know why it makes a difference if pulling from the drain line versus the skimmer line at pump startup? The head to get the pump primed should be the same in both cases, in my engineering mind...

I need to consider ways to keep the pool filled when we are out of town, but its not usually been an issue before, as I've never been gone more than a week during summer, and if its anything like the past few summers, I won't lose much water with the solar cover on...
Click to expand...
With the pump off, the main drain line and the skimmer line are equal.
The difference in pulling from the bottom of a pool vs. from the top is the difference. Your pump is having to lift water from the depth of the pool (6-8'?), not off the surface where it can fall into the bottom of the skimmer. It takes more work.
Some pumps, because the filter is dirty, because the pump basket is dirty (there's no basket on a main drain), because the impeller gets clogged from pulling water off the more-open main drain, won't lift the water that far at all times.
Then the pump runs dry, then the seal and possibly the impeller and sealplate gets damaged, then the bearings get damaged, then you try to get the bearings replaced or end up getting a new motor or even a new pump.
Having to had to do all those repairs for many, many customers because their pump was unattended and ran dry, tells me that trying to use the main drain exclusively for a few weeks may not be the best. Had one customer that did that almost every year until I talked her into an auto-fill.
Why not overfill the pool to begin with and then keep using the skimmer as the pump's water source?
Or, get one of these for use when you won't be there and remove it when you get back:
 
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