I need some advice about redoing this pool plumbing. Another post of mine had people telling me what the problems were. Now, I need to start buying the parts that I will need. I will be doing the plumbing myself. I may not understand all plumbing terminology. Please let me know when I have something wrong.
Because of the lake flooding our pumps (twice) when they were down below the deck, we had to move the pump up on the deck. The pump will not be moved down below again. 2” pipes going in to pump and 1.5” pipes coming out of filter for the return line.
1. We will run the 2” skimmer/main drain straight out from the 3-way valve (parallel to the ground) then put a 90° elbow and take the pipe to the rock wall. Then put another 90° elbow and continue up to the pump with another 90° elbow to the pump up above on the deck. Then we would run the 1.5” return pipes the same way. From ground to the inlet of the pump is 8 ft, but the pipe would be about 1 ft off the ground. We would need some sort of ground support for the pipes.
2. Or…..We could change the pipes that are already there and just lower them to be 12” lower than the pool water. As they are now, the pipes are equal or a little higher than the pool water so we have a problem priming the pump. It primes eventually, but it is hard on the pump. The pump loses prime quite often and adjusts the rpm when that happens. If we keep the pipes overhead, we can support them easily on the underside of the deck. This way uses about 4 - 90° elbows for each pipe. We would make a diagonal run from the 3-way valve (low) up to the deck by the wall (high) but below water level.
3. Or……We could run the pipes up at a diagonal like the yellow and green lines show. I have no idea if either parallel horizontal pipes or diagonal pipes would make much of a difference as long as we keep them below water level. It would use less elbows (head would be better???) However, I may have trouble finding the correct angle of the elbows since they won’t be 90°. I really don't understand how this will work....
4. I plan on using the screw on connectors with o-rings (are these called unions?) to connect the 3 way valve.
We would love to have the 3-way valve up on the deck for easy access, but that would be a lot of pipe to run.
So, if we run the pipes parallel (#1) on ground level, I need:
X ft 2” pipe x ft 1.5” pipe 1 – Jandy Never Lube # 4715 3 – 2” 90° elbows 3 – 1.5” elbows Pipe cleaner and adhesive
1 – 2” and 2 – 1.5” screw on connector with o-rings to connect 3-way valves
Which would be better? #1, 2, or 3?
Did I miss anything on my list?
More to come! Thanks for your help.
