Waterway 3-Way Diverter Valve

[Mr. Muriaticacid]

This 3-way valve in the picture has been bothering me for years. Can someone please look at the valve and tell me whether or not it is installed correctly for what I want it to do? it is hard to see in the picture but to go from fully open (6 o'clock) to fully closed (12 o'clock) I would turn the valve clockwise. But as you can see the handle is in the wrong position. What I have done is pulled out the handle and rotated the valve to the other side of the stops and reinstalled the handle so now I am using the stops at approximately 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock. The reason for this is to be able to control the bubblers on the tanning ledge. With the handle on the 6 and 12 side there is very little control for the bubblers but in the 2 and 4 position I can dial it down to a very small trickle. Correct me if I am wrong but I think the internal valve should be rotated 180 degrees so that the handle would be in the position it is in the picture but the 6 and 12 stops would be reversed. Does this make sense? I have had pool companies open and close for the past 8 years or more and they do things and break things and don't tell you. The handle on this valve is broken and in the same picture if you look closely at the main pump drain plugs you can see they are heavily coated with silicone. Anyways, My question is; can I open the valve and rotate everything 180 degrees and will that work? Or, do I need a different valve mounted in another location to make it work? Or, is this the way it's supposed to be? This is really confusing me. As always, I'm looking forward to hearing from the best!

 

[mknauss]

I believe on the valve their is an indicator that shows which port should be the inlet. If not set up that way, you then have to manage around the stops, or grind them off, to make the valve work.

 

[Rich D]

It appears the valve was installed incorrectly to use the stock stops. The stops are there to prevent any one from unintentionally dead heading the pump. On your set up if the handle is in the vertical position pointing up, it would be dead heading the pump. It appears you would want the handle rotation to go from horizontal pointing towards the bubbler which would be bubbler fully off And returns fully on. It should then rotate clockwise to vertical pointing down, which would be returns fully off and bubblers fully on. Another 90 degree clockwise turn would give you 50% returns and 50% bubblers. You can just file off the stops However you should be able to remove the cover screws and rotate the cover to whatever position you need.

 

[Bama Rambler]

You can rotate the top of that valve to any one of the eight positions that the screws allow, so what you want to do should work.

 

[Mr. Muriaticacid]

Thank you all for the input. I think what I will do is replace the 3-way valve with two 2-way valves. That way I can have better control. I would install a tee above the bubbler return and install one 2-way valve below the tee and then install the other 2-way valve where the original 3-way valve is. I didn’t mention that the returns have a bit too much pressure that I can’t adjust without opening up the bubblers. I’d also like to mention that after my post I found some EXCELLENT how-to guides at Inyo Pools that cleared up a lot of my confusion about different valve,pump, skimmer, etc. configurations. Thanks again.