New to the forum and pool disaster area. pic heavy

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Thanks for the tips.

My pool liner was delivered on the 9th.

I'm not sure why, buy I have not ordered the pump, filter, or swg yet.

I guess I wanted to make sure I googled enough stores to find the cheapest.

So far I have the following prices:

Hayward S244T - $225
Hayward Super Pump 1hp dual speed - $379
Circupool RJ45 - $849
Prices before shipping.

I plan on ordering all 3 today.

The filter is at a company in CA, so I have to wait a few hours before they open.


I have been toying with the idea of adding a separate polaris outlet.
The walls of the pool are wood, so I thought I could drill a hole and hammer a pipe in the side of the earth to the pump area.
If I dug down under the wood of the pool deck on the skimmer side, I would only have to hammer 2.5 feet or so.

Is there any such thing as an "earth drill bit?"

I would not want to use water for fear of the sides caving in and ruining the vermiculite.
 
"Is there any such thing as an "earth drill bit?"

Is your soil sandy there in Gulf Coast? You can bore a hole with high pressure water, but it WILL MAKE A MESS!!!

Take a piece of PVC Pipe longer than what you want. Glue a cap on it and drill a small hole in the cap. To the other end, connect a garden hose using whatever fittings you need to get a good seal. This works like a water drill so to speak, the high pressure water loosens the dirt and washes it back out the hole as you feed the pipe in. Takes a little while, but works pretty well. The more pressure you can get out of the capped end of the pipe. the better.
 
soundguy said:
I have been toying with the idea of adding a separate polaris outlet.
The walls of the pool are wood, so I thought I could drill a hole and hammer a pipe in the side of the earth to the pump area.
If I dug down under the wood of the pool deck on the skimmer side, I would only have to hammer 2.5 feet or so.

Is there any such thing as an "earth drill bit?"
Click to expand...

Not sure about the bit, but it shouldn't be too hard to hammer a 1.5" or 2" pipe through the ground provided you left the other end open. Then all you'd have to do is get the dirt core out of the pipe.

HTH,
Adam
 
Normally you'd want to "center" the return, i.e. place it to minimize the length of hose you need. My pool is, very loosely speaking, triangular, and the Polaris return is near the middle of the long side. (And opposite the skimmer, not that it matters.)

Also it's just above the water line. I don't know if above or below matters, although I'd think at or just above is probably what you want. The hose is supposed to float on the surface so there's no real benefit to putting the return far from the water line.
--paulr
 
This is really stretching my memory and I'm getting OLD too!

Since you've verified that this is a Hayward Skimmer, if I recall correctly, Hayward used to make a skimmer design like this, I think it was called the Turbo skimmer.
The return water passing through the skimmer was suppose to increase the suction, or drawing action of the skimmer.
On the return face plate, it is angled down so as to avoid diverting debris from the skimmer.

Did I miss where you may have indicated if you found a main drain?
It almost looks like the bottom of the deep end (I doubt there's a main drain too as the plumbing doesn't indicate such) started loosing it's base material. If its not solid cement, there should be compacted dirt and a layer of vermiculite. Perhaps you can add a main drain and elevate the bottom of your pool. It does look rather deep.

Some Home Depots and Lowes have water bore nozzles, used to create a pathway under driveways and sidewalks for sprinkler systems. This may help with your earth drillbit.
 
That seems like a lot of work just to add a second line for a Polaris. Your skimmer is right in the middle so that is where you would put a Polaris anyways. Your return jet should unscrew leaving a 1" or 1.5" treaded hole. I would build a PVC "T" to screw into that hold, where on one end you could screw in a new return that you could divert down and away and on the other end the adapter that the Polaris attaches to.
 
The deep end is 8'7" to the channel. For the liner, I had to pay $100 extra for that 1" > 8'6".

When I removed the liner to measure, the vermiculite looked good and solid. No cracks or soft spots.
And, there is no bottom drain.

I could not find my exact skimmer online.
It does not look like it was field modified.

The one that looks most similar is the Hayward model SP1085.

Fortunately all of the pieces are in good condition.


I'm going to try to hammer a piece of pipe through the sidewall before I resort to a water bore.
I hate to think of the mess that would make in the pool bed.



@ keithw.

since the return is so screwey on the pool, dont you think I would need both sides of the T in order to at least TRY to get some sort of decent water circulation?

Once I get the hole under the pool deck, maybe 2.5' of concrete or so, the length of the return pipe would only be about 15' to the pump pad.

In addition, when the polaris is not in use, I could add a fancy little water sprayer thingy to squirt water and make a quasi waterfall :mrgreen:
 
what's behind the steps? Perhaps you can put one or two return lines into the steps using a standard wall fitting...just an idea.

With regards to modifying the exising return line below the skimmer, your idea would work. If there's a way you can put a valve so that you can control the amount of flow through each side, that would allow you to fine tune the Polaris or spray fountain.

Another alternative to the polaris is a suction side cleaner. These are often refered to as moving main drains. I just don't know how well they would do with such a deep dive bowl as yours. If you should go this route, I would highly recommend getting the optional in line leaf trap, especially with the amount of palm tree/pine needles around your pool.
 
Yes you would use both sides of the T. On one side, you'd have your return and on the second, you'd have your Polaris. And you have two different options for controlling the flow. Firstly, the Polaris comes with a return jet with a smaller hole in it. You can drill it out to whatever flow you prefer. Or since you would be building the T out of regular PVC, you could plumb in a valve right before the return.
 

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What I meant was, both sides of the T for water circulation. One side of the T shooting at the deep end and the other shooting at the shallow end.
I need to try to optimize that 1 measly return as best I can.
Maybe I could get semi decent water circulation this way.

I feel like it will be very easy to add a separate polaris return.
If it was not going to be an easy job, I would definitely put it on one side of the T.


-Do I need to make the polaris return a 1.5" pipe?


@Poolsean

Good eye/call on the pine needles. That is going to be a constant battle.
There is probably just dirt behind the steps, but I would have to bust the concrete deck apart to get returns in the steps.
 
I had a brainstrom over the weekend.

I am going to add a polaris return.
Also, I was going to add plumbing off of the return for a polaris booster pump.

The filter pump is a Hayward super pump 1 hp dual speed.

My plumbing is 1.5"

The spec for the pump is 65 gpm @ 30' (high speed).

Will this be enough pump to run the polaris?
 
I would think that you can get away with a single pump and a 360. I always hate the idea of adding the expense of an additional pump and as well as the extra electrical usage if it's not necessary. I am running three returns and a 360 off a single 3.4HP motor with no issues (As well as two solar panels in the spring and fall). If you opt for a 360, just make sure to put valves on the returns so that you can control the volume of water to each separately. The 360 will work best at a specific flow and you'll want to be able to tweak it until you are happy with it's behavior.
 
this is the same size/shape as our pool. However the biggest differance would be we have three skimmer/ returns as well as a main drain in the floor of the deep end for adequate circulation/filtration. Also the return jets (5) in our pool are located on the opposite wall from the skimmers so it pushes the debris toward the skimmers.
 
People, I have let you down!

I had big ideas of doing all of this work myself then basking in the satisfaction of a job well done.

Well never mind that, I outsourced.

2009 was a year full of rain where I live. After I got all of the parts and liner, there was literally not a dry weekend that I had off from work. Then winter came. The old liner shrank and was no longer covering the bottom so I devised an ingenious cover.
I built it with thin wall 1" pvc connected at the top with x's and t's cut out affixing it to the coping. It was beautiful. The frame was a bit flimsy, but I figured that when the tarp was in place and secured, it would become more rigid. Here is a pic.
poolcover.jpg


I figured wrong. It lasted approximately 1 day. A storm came through with wind gusts to probably 30 kts.
The frame did not stay rigid. Actually, it completely inverted and fell into the pool. I was heart broken.
After a brief period of mourning, I covered the exposed foundation as best I could with the tarp.
That stayed in place until early July then it began to tear. Pretty soon the foundation was completely exposed again and not doing well. If I did not do something soon, the whole thing could cave in. That brings us to now.

Since the foundation (which is a sand/mortar mixture) was in such bad shape I decided to have a professional repair it.
I called about 5 companies and the first one to come out was immediately chosen. At first glance he knew who built my pool and told me all of the horror stories. Apparently, I have a notoriously cheaply built pool. He began to give me all sorts of advice, tips and tricks. That is why he was chosen. He freely gave his experience.
Originally, he was only going to do the foundation repair and a friend and I were going to drop the liner. I could not get a firm commitment from my friend, so I decided to go ahead and let the pool guy do it.

I paid close attention to everything Roger (the pool guy) did.
The foundation repair was $500 and he skimmed the entire hopper with vermiculite. Other repairs were minor, but he used maybe 6 bags of vermiculite.
He dropped the liner, foamed the walls with 1/4" foam, repaired the foundation, replaced a side wall in the shallow end and sold me some new chrome ladder treads all for $1000.

Now that I've seen how it is done, I would not hesitate in doing it myself in the future. Even skim coating with vermiculite.
It is all very average guy doable

I also gel coated the stairs and that was a fiasco. We'll save that for another post.

I'll get some repaired pool pics up soon.
 

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