Water leaking to the backwash line in a filter mode - photos

[Fleur]

Hello Everyone,

I have a problem - water is leaking to the backwash line in a filter mode. I noticed it recently since our backwash line comes out in front of the house, from the lawn. I guess salt water running through part of our lawn is not a great idea, but that's how previous owners designed it (better than a flexible hose ). I turned off auto-refill and after running filters at full speed for 6 hours I lost ~ 1 inch of water

I read online that most likely there is a bad gasket or o-ring on the valve, but I have no idea which valve in our set-up we're talking about. We have 8 multiport valves and 1 push-pull valve. It looks like push-pull valves do not have gaskets, just an o-ring while multiport valves have both: gaskets + o-rings. While back-washing I only used push-pull valve – never touched anything else (now I’m wondering if I was doing it wrong…)

Below are photos. Out of 8 Jandy NeverLube valves, 5 of them have Actuators.

I visually inspected all our multiport valves, and only one looked different, with some sticky goo around it (see close-up photo below)

Also, I don't know which pipe leads to our front lawn - our backwash line. It looks like a pretty complex set-up to me with many pipes entering the ground...

I wanted to figure out how everything works as soon as we bought this house, so I called Leslie’s pool school and scheduled an appointment. I let them know beforehand that we had a complex set-up so they would send a knowledgeable guy, but it did not help. I wasted 1 hour of my life, money and was extremely disappointed at the end. The guy spent 25 minutes on hold with 1-800 Pentair because he couldn't answer my question. I just wanted to know if it was possible to set up 2 speed pump to run on a low speed via our Pentair controller.
I could have dialed 1-800 for free myself; I did not have to pay someone per hour to do that . Basically, when he left I knew as much as before he came to teach me about our pool. Sorry, I digressed (still mad about this experience)

At the end I am here, asking for help. I learned a lot on this forum about pool chemistry (thank you very much), but never touched mechanical part of our set-up (except cleaning the cell, but it does not count) Should I ask my husband to open our push-pull valve first and see if O-ring needs to be replaced? If this is #1 step, what should we do except putting our controller into a service mode before disassembling that valve?

Thank you very much!

close-up of our push-pull valve

 

[Bama Rambler]

Re: Water leaking to the backwash line in a filter mode - ph

The valve that's the problem is the push-pull valve. It's most likely an o-ring in the valve that's leaking by. Take that screw out on the side of the valve and the assembly should come out the top. You can then replace the o-rings. Lube them good before reassembling the valve.

 

[Fleur]

Re: Water leaking to the backwash line in a filter mode - ph

The valve that's the problem is the push-pull valve. It's most likely an o-ring in the valve that's leaking by. Take that screw out on the side of the valve and the assembly should come out the top. You can then replace the o-rings. Lube them good before reassembling the valve.

Thank you, I will do this today and update if it helped.

 

[Bama Rambler]

Re: Water leaking to the backwash line in a filter mode - ph

It may require a bit of brute force to get it apart if the o-ring has came out of the groove but it'll come apart.

 

[Fleur]

Re: Water leaking to the backwash line in a filter mode - ph

It may require a bit of brute force to get it apart if the o-ring has came out of the groove but it'll come apart.

What kind of brute force are we taking about?

We removed 2 screws and got to the first O-Ring. Well, at that point I did not know it was 1 of 4.
Since it looked totally fine to me, I found a diagram of this slide valve and realized that there are 4 O-rings in it.
The only thing, we tried pulling the valve up, but it would not move. We put in a lot of force, but nothing happened.

I don't even know if it matters in which position we should be doing it. Right now the valve is up/locked (filter position).
Should we try pulling it up in this position or we should switch to open/down (backwash) or locked/down?

Also, if anyone knows a reliable company/guy in Phoenix/Chandler/Gilbert AZ area who can troubleshoot this thing, please let me know. One of the pool companies we hired before to do a weekly service had 2 guys who were hitting hard our Intelli control panel because they thought 2 buttons fot the pool & spa got stuck. They did not realize that we had 2 speed pumps and by pressing the button once they were activating low speed. Another one had a woman who turned the valve to a backwash position with a pool pump running, then showed me a very high pressure and said that we need to change our sand. She also promised to give me a good price on it. Basically, I'm looking for an upgrade from that

 

[Fleur]

Re: Water leaking to the backwash line in a filter mode - ph

We decided to use a help of the professional since the valve stuck for good there.

I was able to get the same day appointment. The guy seemed knowledgeable, he used all kind of tools and silicone lubricant which he pushed as far as he could. After fighting with the valve for ~ 10 minutes, he was able to pull it up without any damage. He actually warned me that there was a possibility that the handle might break and we would need to change the whole thing. Thankfully, it did not happen. 2 bottom o-rings looked fine to me, but he pointed that one of them did not have round borders, they were a little bit squashed. He changed 2 bottom o-rings.
There was plenty of lubricant involved :-D

So far, it looked like this fix solved the problem, but I will double check tomorrow. At least for now our push-pull valve goes smoothly, all the way up (on my photos you will see that the metal pin did not go all the way up - it was stuck).

 

[Bama Rambler]

Re: Water leaking to the backwash line in a filter mode - ph

Glad you were able to get it fixed.

Sorry you had to call someone but at least you learned something.

What happens sometimes is that one of the o-rings will pop out of the groove and it hangs up on one of the ports and then it's a bear to get out.