Using Skimmer Port To Vacuum Pool

[RAILhead]

Hey all! Newbie question I thought I'd ask here before/instead of contacting my pool installer tomorrow. Short story, we had some fire ants try to build under our pavers, and after killing and spraying the deck, some of the bodies made their way into the pool -- and now they're lining up along the water's edge. The skimmer has taken some of them, but I'd like to just vacuum them out.

So...

One of the techs that did the install told me about dropping the hose under the water, making sure to connect the non-swivel edge to the skimmer port -- but he said something about putting the system in maintenance mode or adjusting something on the pumps/valves or something. I didn't catch that, and we haven't scheduled our walkthrough yet.

In the mean time, anyone know what I need to do so I don't screw something up? I'd have to be in pool mode for the skimmer port to work, right?

Here are pics of all my equipment in case that will help...

Thanks in advance!
Maury

 

[PoolGuyNJ]

The waterline, where most of the ants will congregate, must be skimmed, not vacuumed. The vacuum can not put a mix of air and water. Once it pulls air, you will lose prime and have no suction at all.

Skimmer on and maintenance mode on. It will lose comms with the pump at this time. You will manually set the pump speed since it uses a Sta-Rite variable drive.

FYI A seemingly properly set variable drive may be under-performing for a Rainbow tablet system because the water velocity in the pipes may be a bit slow. This is usually a poor mix of equipment but can be sort of hidden by a higher flow rate on the pump. If your tabs are lasting more than 10 days in a filled container and your chlorine tests are showing a low level, this is likely so. Pushing the pump to about 60/70 gallons per minute should solve this though. Water then moves fast enough for the Rainbow to catch it.

Scott

 

[RAILhead]

Gotcha -- thanks for the info!