Pop Up Head Disintegrated - Can't Find

[garywi]

Hi Guys, one of my pops up came apart in the pool. The spring the bottom cap never came out of the plumping. Any thoughts on how to get it out.

 

[jonpcar]

Did you try turning on your system and seeing if the water pressure just pops it out?

 

[garywi]

Yes, have been running it. Not coming out. Checked everywhere in pool, no evidence.

 

[jonpcar]

Gary, my popups aren’t your type but it looks like the entire portion missing doesn’t have any physical attachment to the popup sleeve. It is the part that goes up and down, right? So if you could go down there (I assume it is too cold), there shouldn’t be any problem with fishing it out. It must be jammed in there at a weird angle (along with the spring that has probably “expanded” and grabbed on to something). Are you sure it is still there...can you see it or have you tried installing a new valve and it doesn’t settle into place?

If it were me, I would duct tape a ~8”-10” piece of coat hangar to the end of one of my pool poles that has a little hook at the end (L shaped, not J shaped). If possible with your system, stop your IFCS on the problem zone (you should see water above that popup disturbing the water). Then I would gently tap and pull inside of that popup sleeve to see if the remaining part of the popup can be dislodged.

 

[garywi]

Gary, my popups aren’t your type but it looks like the entire portion missing doesn’t have any physical attachment to the popup sleeve. It is the part that goes up and down, right? So if you could go down there (I assume it is too cold), there shouldn’t be any problem with fishing it out. It must be jammed in there at a weird angle (along with the spring that has probably “expanded” and grabbed on to something). Are you sure it is still there...can you see it or have you tried installing a new valve and it doesn’t settle into place?

If it were me, I would duct tape a ~8”-10” piece of coat hangar to the end of one of my pool poles that has a little hook at the end (L shaped, not J shaped). If possible with your system, stop your IFCS on the problem zone (you should see water above that popup disturbing the water). Then I would gently tap and pull inside of that popup sleeve to see if the remaining part of the popup can be dislodged.

Thank you. I will give that a try. I was thinking of putting the new pop up on, run the pool to create to flow resistance to see if that does it. Then take the pop up off again to see if the old pieces moved.

 

[jonpcar]

It doesn’t seem like you will be able to get a new popup on that particular sleeve if there are still pieces of the old one in there...I wouldnt imagine that those pieces, especially the spring, walked themselves back into the popup feed pipe...on my system i don’t think that would be possible. In any case, successfully putting a popup on that particular head doesn’t seem like it would help. I would make sure that all of the other popups for THAT particular zone are installed in order to maximize the water flow through the problem popup sleeve, which could dislodge anything in there. Did you inherit this pool’s popups? Is it possible the previous owner put a popup in there that was missing the spring/bottom?