Low suction for vacuuming

[Blasted Bill]

Hello all,
this is my 2nd year of opening the pool. It went SO much better this year. Got chlorine in before the algae could bloom. A big issue i had last year was vacuuming up the tiny small particles that settle at the bottom. if you run the vacuum over them and it doesn't get sucked up, they turn into a cloud then you have to wait an hour or so to try to vacuum them again. I always see videos where they run the vacuum head over and just EVERY thing gets sucked up. mine i have to move VERY slowly and it sort of kind of sucks them up but not very good. my pool came with a dolphin s100 cleaner. it works fine for leaves but does NOTHING for the fine particles. just turns then into clouds. Over the winter i got a great deal on a hayward navi gator pool cleaner that is suppose to self guide it's self along the bottom straight into the skimmer via vacuum hose. I figured this would vastly cut down on my cleaning time. I hooked it up and it did nothing. It came with a suction test gauge(little L shaped tool with a min and max reading). So i hooked that up and it did NOTHING. didn't move at all, even connect directly to the skimmer plate. I could feel the water sucking around it. I always felt like a had a suction issue, even just the skimmer pulling in the water from the surface.

So as a test, I set the system to vacuum to waste and it pulled the gauge all the way to max. I then vacuumed the button of the pool and it worked pretty good but I only got like half of it done before the water was down to the lowest point I like it to be. about 2 inches of water just to vacuum half the pool. I can't keep that up especially if i want to set the navi gator up and let it go un supervised.

So to go over so things, the sand is only 1 year old. I'm currently only running one pump filter while I am doing work on the other side of the pool. The filter was freshly backwashed. I normally run the filter with a skimmer sock(the cottonwood is very bad right now) but i had that removed. I am using a skimmer plate to connect to my vacuum hose. My old powerline xp unfortunately was run dry and broke. I got an amazing deal on a brand new one. still 1.5 HP. All my hoses are "soft" hoses(aka no permeant pvc hard pipe(putting that in on the other side of the pool right now). The output is going to a solar heater. It's a like 4ft by 8ft one with all the lines running from 2 large tubes. Even with out that being on last year the suction wasn't that good. I didn't try with out the solar heater today cause it's a pain in the butt and i'd like to try to solve the issue with it being left on. The pressure gage reads 40 when the pump is off and about 55 when on(yes prolly a bad gage).

Is there any thing i can do increase the suction? do I need a larger pump, like 2hp? I don't think a sand deep clean would help cause it wasn't that good last year. would a pump after the filter as well help? Thanks.

 

[Texas Splash]

I would first ask to see a full set of water test results. I say this because your filter may be overwhelmed with organics impacting your ability to pull water good enough for the vacuum to operate. This is somewhat confirmed by the fact that when you bypass the filter in WASTE mode, it works great. So let's see some water test results to ensure you don't have a chemistry problem contributing to your later of water suction and poor water flow.

 

[Blasted Bill]

How do you want that info? Want like the hand written notes from my tf-100 or want the local pool stores print out? The one thing I have been having issues with is with having enough ca. I add 2 bags via the sock method. I had one sock in the skimmer and one hanging in front of the return. I ran the pump for 24 hours and waited a week and it's not showing any change. I was going to make another post about that. My clorine was a tad low (both free and actual) before I left for the weekend so I threw shock in. I will test again Monday when I'm home.

Another test that I thought of to kind of test your, it's the filter theory, is I set the filter to recirculate. Testing the suction with that had a slight improvement. It moved the gage about an 8th of an inch but no were near the min.

I will also try by passing the solar heater Monday

 

[Texas Splash]

notes from my tf-100

Yes, on the TF-100. Pool store is no good. You can post the results here like this:
FC
CC
CYA
PH
TA
CH - should be N/A unless there is a need for the heat pump.

 

[Texas Splash]

one thing I have been having issues with is with having enough ca. I add 2 bags via the sock method. I had one sock in the skimmer and one hanging in front of the return. I ran the pump for 24 hours and waited a week and it's not showing any change.

I'm guessing you mean the CYA yes? We'll come back to that once you post the full set of test results.

the filter theory, is I set the filter to recirculate. Testing the suction with that had a slight improvement.

Sounds a bit like the filter is overwhelmed, but the test results should help.

 

[Blasted Bill]

Yes, on the TF-100. Pool store is no good. You can post the results here like this:
FC
CC
CYA
PH
TA
CH - should be N/A unless there is a need for the heat pump.

FC = 2.5
CC = .5
CYA = 60
PH = 7.2
TA = 90
CH = 125

 

[Texas Splash]

Thanks Bill. If those numbers are indicative of typical levels, the FC is too low and it's very possible you have algae. Even if you don't see it, transparent organics are building up and overwhelming the filter. What I would do if I were you is increase the FC to about 7-8 ppm today with liquid chlorine. Keep it in that 7-8 range if you can and do an Overnight Chlorine Loss Test. That should confirm if you still have excess organics in the water. If you pass, then great. Just maintain the FC as noted on the FC/CYA Levels and we can focus more on the filter itself. But if you fail the OCLT, then you'll need to perform the SLAM Process. Hope that helps.

 

[Blasted Bill]

Just completed the over night test, no change in FC. So what's next? Thanks

 

[Blasted Bill]

Ok I finally had more time for testing. 1st off, I found a video explaining how to properly put the doughboy skimmers in suction mode. Apparently you put the top plate inside and put an adapter inside the pool. So, After vacuuming, the air in the pump would build up quite bad. After investing, I was able to see through top plate in suction mode and see bubbles coming from the pool. But how? The only thing I could think was from around the sides of in wall skimmer. So I tightened all the screws and it solved that issue.

The suction was better but still not to the min line. I also tightened all the screws on the filter and verified tightness of all the hose clamps.

I did by pass my solar heater and the suction was well below max. So it looks like my solar heater is the issue. I'm not sure if there is any way to improve the suction with with the solar heater. I might just have to wait until I hook my other pump

 

[Blasted Bill]

One last update incase anyone comes across this. A lesson of some times it's the stupid simple dumb things. I was taking my solar heater apart and it turns out the output side reduces all the way to 1.25 instead of the rest which is 1.5. so that has a huge effect on the suction.