My pool has a basin that is used as part of an autofill mechanism: the pump pulls water from the basin and re-injects it into the pool, which then spills it back into the basin.
As the pool water evaporates, this cycle makes the level in the basin drop because the water from the basin is used to fill out the missing water in the pool until it reaches the edge where it can flow into the basin again. Lowering the level in the basin triggers my autofill valve to ensure the basin never runs out of water, and that's how refill works.
I got into a situation where the basin _did_ run out of water (you can get to that point when you start the pump after it hasn't run for a while and (a) the basin doesn't have enough water to completely replace the evaporated water in the pool and (b) the autofill valve can't keep up with the pump).
Now the pump won't prime anymore. The pump is about 30 ft from the pool and 6 ft higher. It's a Pentair VSP, and I've left it in "priming" mode for 11 minutes, which is the default setting for that pump. During this time, I did see bubbles come out on the return side into the pool, so the pump is moving air (which I assume also means that water is coming up the suction line) but after 11 minutes of bubbling, the pump shut down and the flow had still not been established.
I've tried to remove the left-side check valve to fill out the suction side with water, hoping there would be another check valve at the bottom that would let the water accumulate in the pipe, but that didn't work, and I suspect all I was doing was to fill up the basin through the drains.
I encountered a similar problem with one of my fountains and it turns out that a coordinated start process with an assistant worked: the assistant plugged the drain with her hand while I filled up the suction side and the pump basket, and then she removed her hand as I started the pump.
I suspect I can do the same here, but there are 4 drains with anti-entrapment covers to plug, so I would need quite a few assistants!
Surely there's a simpler way?
I'm tempted to let the pump try to prime for 30 minutes, as the manual explicitly calls that as the maximum priming time allowed (that's the max that you can set it to as well in the user interface). Makes sense to try?
Thanks in advance!
As the pool water evaporates, this cycle makes the level in the basin drop because the water from the basin is used to fill out the missing water in the pool until it reaches the edge where it can flow into the basin again. Lowering the level in the basin triggers my autofill valve to ensure the basin never runs out of water, and that's how refill works.
I got into a situation where the basin _did_ run out of water (you can get to that point when you start the pump after it hasn't run for a while and (a) the basin doesn't have enough water to completely replace the evaporated water in the pool and (b) the autofill valve can't keep up with the pump).
Now the pump won't prime anymore. The pump is about 30 ft from the pool and 6 ft higher. It's a Pentair VSP, and I've left it in "priming" mode for 11 minutes, which is the default setting for that pump. During this time, I did see bubbles come out on the return side into the pool, so the pump is moving air (which I assume also means that water is coming up the suction line) but after 11 minutes of bubbling, the pump shut down and the flow had still not been established.
I've tried to remove the left-side check valve to fill out the suction side with water, hoping there would be another check valve at the bottom that would let the water accumulate in the pipe, but that didn't work, and I suspect all I was doing was to fill up the basin through the drains.
I encountered a similar problem with one of my fountains and it turns out that a coordinated start process with an assistant worked: the assistant plugged the drain with her hand while I filled up the suction side and the pump basket, and then she removed her hand as I started the pump.
I suspect I can do the same here, but there are 4 drains with anti-entrapment covers to plug, so I would need quite a few assistants!
Surely there's a simpler way?
I'm tempted to let the pump try to prime for 30 minutes, as the manual explicitly calls that as the maximum priming time allowed (that's the max that you can set it to as well in the user interface). Makes sense to try?
Thanks in advance!
