Spa spilling over into pool when it shouldn’t

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J

jkell01

Member
Mar 19, 2025
5
Dallas/Ft. Worth
Last week I had a new heater installed for a connected spa/pool with a single pump. There was no heater installed when we moved into the house 6 months ago.

The heater is a 260k BTU gas heater that will be only used to heat the spa. To heat the spa exclusively, I should be able to move valves to ‘spa return’ and ‘spa suction’ to run the filtration exclusively through the spa. However, once I move the valves, the water level rises and the spa spills over into the pool.

As the spa spills over into the pool, the spa water takes much longer to heat.

I can confirm that water does not appear to be going into the pool and that water is not flowing through the pool skimmers.

Is there a valve I’m missing? Is the spa suction not working? Hopefully someone can help point me in the right direction. The installer and heater distributor have been no help so far.,
 
Welcome to TFP.

Sounds like your suction valve is not properly positioned.

Show us pictures of the overall equipment pad and the position of the two valves in both POOL mode and SPA mode. Four valve position pictures.
 
01,

Edit.. Your first pic..

You simple have the the Spa return open and the spa suction closed..

When you want to use the spa, you have to have the Pool return fully closed (Spa return fully open) and the Spa suction fully open

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
01,

In your second pics you have the Spa return set up ok, but on the suction side you are still sucking water from your pool's main drain.

Your suction side plumbing is not normal.. :scratch: Who plumbed it???

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
01,

It will work, but you will just have to move more valves than normal..

In the Spa mode, you want ALL the suction water coming from the Spa drain. And you want ALL the water to go back to the Spa.

In the Pool mode, you want NONE your suction water coming from the Spa Drain.. And you want most of your water going back to the pool, except just a little going to the Spa.. This will cause the Spa to spillover into the pool.

I can't tell if you have a spa make-up valve or not... Just to the right of the "Pool Return" label, is a valve that is shut off.. What happens when you turn that valve on? Do you know what that valve controls??? It think it may send water back to your spa, when in the pool mode.. causing the spillover..

Thanks,

Jim R.
 
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With your strange plumbing you need to also close the MAIN DRAIN when using the spa.

Turn the handle 90 degrees as shown by the green lines.

You do not need the MAIN DRAIN open with the pool. When changing from pool to spa you can just turn the suction valve between the two with the MAIN DRAIN closed. Or you can remember to turn both.

1742413566974.png
 
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ajw22 said:
With your strange plumbing you need to also close the MAIN DRAIN when using the spa.

Turn the handle 90 degrees as shown by the green lines.

You do not need the MAIN DRAIN open with the pool. When changing from pool to spa you can just turn the suction valve between the two with the MAIN DRAIN closed. Or you can remember to turn both.

View attachment 633032
Click to expand...
I’ll check it out when I return home and report back. Thank you for the helpful info.
 
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