My suggestion is to use a float and a garden hose timer, which are used for lawn sprinklers. Have it come on in the middle of the night (non-activity time) The timer would allow water into the hose only during the allotted time and the float would fill the pool as needed. The timers are usually around $10-15.
Robin
You wouldn't put such a valve in the main pool itself, however you would want to locate it somewhere connected to that body of water where it would not be subject to wave action when the pool is being used and the automatic filling of the pool would create waves itself which might add too much water...
You would want to build a chamber of some sort, like a sump pit, connected to the pool with a large diameter pipe... Within that chamber you would install the float valve which would regulate the water level of the pool... Since a body of water always levels itself out this would work as long as the water inlet where the water is to be added is not within the chamber and was located far enough away so that any motion or turbulence created by the addition of the water would not effect the operation of the float valve... The idea of a body of water always leveling itself out is why water levels are used in construction on some projects where a laser level is overkill or not an affordable option...
~~ Evan
That skimmer 1-foot diameter well seems to be the ONLY place where the water level of the pool can be monitored without intruding into the pool itself.
But how do you get water INTO the pool from the skimmer?
What is a Zamboni?
It's a forklift sized "truck" that resurfaces the ice on an ice rink.
I thought zamboni was to smooth the surface, not to level it.
Oh, come on. You should know by now to do an internet search before asking such a question on usenet group. DAGS!
The skimmer well is connected to the pool by an always open channel. The water level in the well is always the same as the pool.
Don't they plumb in an overflow on pools up there? That is a pipe below the water line that goes out into the yard somewhere and you adjust the water level by the height of the pipe emerging above grade. You can put your "well" on that pipe and use it for the fill and the overflow. BTW there will be another pipe out in the yard that will have water in it at the pool water level if you have a pool light but I won't go there ;-)
I agree. So you can put a valve in the skimmer; and that will turn on when the skimmer water well drops too low.
But then, how do you get EXTRA water (from a garden hose for example) into the skimmer?
The skimmer cover (from the top deck) is about a foot from the edge of the pool. Assume the garden hose connection is twenty feet away.
Is the proposal to snake a garden hose twenty feet across the lawn and concrete deck and then just dump it into the top of the skimmer with the top removed?
That's what confuses me. How do you get the water INTO the skimmer when most skimmers (that I know of) are built into the concrete deck of the pool.
There's no entrance (other than the top cover); but if you use the top cover, someone is gonna trip on the garden hose and break their neck.
Did I miss something?
You can't just pull the top cap off the skimmer and dump a garden hose down it as it will be snaking across the deck ... so how do you get water INTO the skimmer from an outside source?
I'd love to know ('cuz I'd implement it myself!).
I really want to try this ... but ...
I have an overflow that is a one-inch plastic pipe embedded in the pool tiles about an inch or two above the high water level.
I guess you're saying if the float sensor determines a low water level, you can run water (backward) into this pipe to refill the pool.
The main problem, I would think, is that the slope of this drainage pipe is sloping away from the pool.
It's an interesting idea to fill the pool from the drainage pipes. But how would you defeat the fact that this drainage pipe is sloping away from the pool?
I just looked. In addition to the 1-inch diameter emergency overflow plastic pipe that is in the side of the pool about an inch or two above the water line, there IS a three-inch wide plastic pipe sticking up out of the grass ten or fifteen feet to the side of the pool.
This pipe drains out to the street but I don't see any water in it unless I water the grass too much.
It's intriguing what you intimate (that this pipe can be used as the well) but that still begs the question of how to get the water INTO the pool once the float valve senses the low pool level.
You can't have a hose (safely anyway) snaking across the pool deck; so how do you get water INTO the pool? Any ideas?
Interesting. For my pool, I looked for that pipe. I found one that is about an inch in diameter, and it has a GFCI on it, and about three pipes sticking up out of the ground together.
I tested that GFCI with the pool lights on, and it tripped them off.
Is the suggestion to rig a float valve to that pipe sticking out of the ground? What are the other two pipes right next to it going into the GCFI?
Water pressure. Appropriate valves are an exercise for the student.
A GFCI on a plastic pipe? There is something you're not telling us here.
It's a drain pipe from the pool lights?
Dunno. You tell us. ;-)
When they rough in an overflow it is usually 12-15" below the water level and you adjust the height of the out flow pipe to determine water level.
One goes to the pool light, one goes to the power and one goes to the grounding grid. The one that goes to the pool light (the "cord") has water in at the pool water level. The trick would be to tap into that pipe legally to sample the water level. Maybe a glue in saddle "T" but that is not really legal I suppose. I am not sure why tho.
The fill valve is plumbed into the skimmer when the pool was built. It is controlled by the toilet fill valve. If you have no such plumbing it would be necessary to add it to use this method. When complete, the pool is kept filled with almost no need for extra effort and is easily adjusted if necessary within about a 5-6 inch spread.
I plumbed the waste water from my RO into the pool and I have not had to add water since.
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