So I recently bought a house. In purchasing this house I'm tackling my first time ever owning a pool, so I am trying to figure out everything. After the purchase I've learned my pool setup is kind of a mosh pod of failures and laziness from the previous owner. So i am looking for advice to either fix this issue or work with it until i have the money saved up to correct it.
The pool has a 3hp pool pump in a pump house, 18000ish gallon pool inside a screen cage... not 100% sealed because of random small holes in the screening. It appears there was once a salt water system and a cartridge filter setup, but that is not the case anymore. There is a Pool Pilot EcoNano autopilot mounted to the wall and a huge like 4ft tall cartridge filter housing with a inline Autopilot PPC1 salt chlorine generator. The mounted display shows a error of P=80. The previous owners were not caring for the pool as saltwater, because when we bought it they had a floating chlorine container with tablets in the pool.
A few weeks after purchase I was looking into the pool setup more, because I wanted to know how to maintain it properly, but i felt over my head with parts for salt water and it appeared no use of salt water being used, so i reached out to a few pool cleaning companies, figured i watch them to gain knowledge and maybe take over later. When the pool cleaner came out, he was very confused also and when he went to take the filter apart to clean it, we learned there was no filter in the container and the internals he said were gutted from it, so it was not acting as a filter anymore. Also i learned that 1 of the 2 suction return side pipes were capped off. The skimmer basket was the only return side to the pool via a 1inch pipe, the 2nd return on the bottom of the pool is capped off inside the pool.
So i reached out to the previous owners and they told me they never serviced it as a salt water pool so they didn't have an idea about that salt water equipment, but they knew about the filter issue. He said he cleaned it manually with a gas powered thrash pump and portable above ground filter, because when he would try to use the skimmer to clean it with a pool robot, it kept burning up the pool pumps claiming the return is to small.
So now I'm stuck in the middle of this weird setup and looking for direction.... I have some idea of basic pool water maintenance because I owned a hot tub in the past, but that was very easy to maintain because of its size. I use to use a cheap shop vac for cleaning it.. i would run the hose along the surface and bottom filling up the shop vac, then on the drain port on the vac i had a whole house water filter allowing the water to trickle back into the hot tub. it was unique on its own, but it worked with such a small hot tub, i can't imagine using the same concept on a 18000 gallon pool....
I was curious if i could replicate his cleaning method for simplicity for now, but i don't want to use gas thrash pump... i found this submersible pump on amazon.. has a 2inch inlet/outlet.. moves similar volume of water..
The pool has a 3hp pool pump in a pump house, 18000ish gallon pool inside a screen cage... not 100% sealed because of random small holes in the screening. It appears there was once a salt water system and a cartridge filter setup, but that is not the case anymore. There is a Pool Pilot EcoNano autopilot mounted to the wall and a huge like 4ft tall cartridge filter housing with a inline Autopilot PPC1 salt chlorine generator. The mounted display shows a error of P=80. The previous owners were not caring for the pool as saltwater, because when we bought it they had a floating chlorine container with tablets in the pool.
A few weeks after purchase I was looking into the pool setup more, because I wanted to know how to maintain it properly, but i felt over my head with parts for salt water and it appeared no use of salt water being used, so i reached out to a few pool cleaning companies, figured i watch them to gain knowledge and maybe take over later. When the pool cleaner came out, he was very confused also and when he went to take the filter apart to clean it, we learned there was no filter in the container and the internals he said were gutted from it, so it was not acting as a filter anymore. Also i learned that 1 of the 2 suction return side pipes were capped off. The skimmer basket was the only return side to the pool via a 1inch pipe, the 2nd return on the bottom of the pool is capped off inside the pool.
So i reached out to the previous owners and they told me they never serviced it as a salt water pool so they didn't have an idea about that salt water equipment, but they knew about the filter issue. He said he cleaned it manually with a gas powered thrash pump and portable above ground filter, because when he would try to use the skimmer to clean it with a pool robot, it kept burning up the pool pumps claiming the return is to small.
So now I'm stuck in the middle of this weird setup and looking for direction.... I have some idea of basic pool water maintenance because I owned a hot tub in the past, but that was very easy to maintain because of its size. I use to use a cheap shop vac for cleaning it.. i would run the hose along the surface and bottom filling up the shop vac, then on the drain port on the vac i had a whole house water filter allowing the water to trickle back into the hot tub. it was unique on its own, but it worked with such a small hot tub, i can't imagine using the same concept on a 18000 gallon pool....
I was curious if i could replicate his cleaning method for simplicity for now, but i don't want to use gas thrash pump... i found this submersible pump on amazon.. has a 2inch inlet/outlet.. moves similar volume of water..
