That's probably what's there, ie it's threaded. Assuming the basket strainer itself is not cracked at the threads, then you could cut the pipe and put on a new slip to male threaded adaptor. But the other problem you have is that as you pointed out, they packed fitting to fitting to valves etc, without even an inch of pipe to work with. To get it apart and back together, you may have to sacrifice some valves or other components. Not clear from the pic exactly how to approach it. But when putting it back together, as long as you have room to the right of the pump, I'd move the pump over by
6 to 8" so that you have some pipe there to make future repairs easy. That is what should have been done in the first place. With some pipe you can just cut the pipe, get it apart, use a repair coupling to put it back together, etc.
?the plumbing is pressed fitting to fitting, with 7 Jandy valves all pressed together, within a foot with nary a pipe in between?
That is exactly the difference between a technician and a contractor. A con tractor only cares about you until he gets paid, a technician makes sure he doesn?t have to come back and re-do the what he just did because he?s employed to maintain the equipment of the company and he wants to get paid the next pay day as well as the one after that.
In California, it is illegal to replace my 1.65 HP single-speed pump with a single-speed pump by anyone but the homeowner.
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So, if I hired anyone to replace anything, I'm told it will costs thousands of dollars because the entire system has to be redesigned & rebuilt to accommodate multi-speed pumps. And I wouldn't have the knowhow (or money) to design my own multi-speed system.
I think I'll try to find a way to move the two pumps back about a foot (& maybe to the side as was suggested).
That means cutting at the inlet, as close as I can to preserve both the pump and the nearest Jandy valve.
Here's a smaller picture with the two inlets circled:
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(bigger picture below)
It looks like the filter pump (left side in the picture) has a straight "thing" that can be cut - but this thing appears to be a "sleeve" or "repair" of some sort (as it has a slice in the top that you can see in the photo).
If I cut that "thing" in half, I might be able to move the filter bump backward a foot or two.
The problem on the cleaner pump (right side of the picture) is that there are two 90 degree elbows flush out of the pump and butting up against the Jandy valve. So, the question there is _where_ would you cut the cleaner pump inlet lines?
It's hard to tell exactly how far back you'd have to go and what all you'd have to replace when you cut this apart. The problem as everyone agrees is that it's all put together with no straight pipe in between that you could cut and rejoin. Some things to keep in mind:
If the strainer basket is cracked, you can very likely replace just that, without replacing the pump.
manual 3 port valves aren't terribly expensive, so if you have to replace one it's not the end of the world. The ones I have are glued fittings, so I think you're going to wind up having to do that.
It looks like you have a motorized valve. Don't know what kind that is, but with the one I have, it uses a standard
3 port valve and the motor part just replaces the top part. So, if yours is like that and you have to replace the motorized valve, it may be no worse or expensive than replacing a
3 port valve.
If you cut it all apart and move the pumps back, I would put unions on both of them. They did put a union on the discharge side of one pump, but it's not clear to me that having just that one does any good, because you still can't remove the pump. With unions on the suction side, if you need to work on a pump or replace it, you just unscrew the union.
If you can do this yourself, even if you have to buy a couple valves, etc, it's going to be a LOT cheaper than calling a pool company.
Depending on your cost of electricity, replacing those pumps with dual speed ones could have a reasonable cost recovery period. The idea is that they run at low speed to filter the water, which is most of the time. Instead of running the pump for say 6 hours, you run it maybe 18 hours to move the same amount of water. But it uses a lot less electricity because the energy required goes up at like the cube of the speed. But I would only use a std dual speed pump. They only cost a little more than a regular pump. There are also variable speed pumps, which have electronics and are very expensive. Those, IMO, are nuts.
Finally, how bad is it actually leaking? For example, If it leaks two gallons a day, unless it's causing other problems, is it worth fixing?
Straight section of the "sleeve" in the filter pump inlet:
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Note: This straight section has a weird "gash" in the top of it; so it may not actually be a "pipe" but more of a sleeve over a pipe. I'm not actually sure.
Elbowed section in the cleaner pump inlet:
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Once I make these two cuts, I might be able to slip a pip OVER the Jandy valve inlet, thereby saving the Jandy valves.
If I have to remove the Jandy valves, I'll have to drain the pool because the filter pumps are 8 feet below the waterline. Sigh... Jandy valve neck
Basically the top (electrical) half is a CompPool valve; with the bottom part being the original mechanical Jandy valve.
If I cut flush with the valve port, I might be able to slip an oversized pipe OVER the outside of the valve, and then taper that pipe back down to the original size before going into the pool pump.
But the only way I'll be able to do that is to move the pumps back about a foot or two - which is fine by me as pipe is cheap. It's the valves which are expensive.
Plus, if I remove the valves, the entire pool has to be drained because they're well below the pool water level.
This picture shows where I think I'll move the filter pump back about a foot or so to:
Funny you mention that because "I" put that one union in when I had to replace a cracked Jandy valve on the outlet side of the cleaner pump.
And, I agree. One union does me no good - but what I can do is put a union on the inlet side, and then I can remove the pump at will.
I also need to figure out how to safely extend the 220V heavy wire. For that, I was thinking of bolting a junction box to the concrete. Would that work?
Exactly the dilemma why it isn't worth thousands of dollars to fix.
They leak only when the pumps are turned off.
I put in about 500 gallons every few days, unless I manually turn all the Jandy valves off. (I have an Ace Hardware water flow valve that I manually set to 500 gallons which is about an inch of water.)
The water is cheap; the pool chemicals aren't. Plus, I can't have the pool on automatic if I turn off the valves.
I don't know exactly what that section is composed of either. But why not just cut it about 1 1/2" from the valve? That looks like just normal pipe. Then you have 1 1/2" of pipe sticking out to put a coupling on when you rebuild.
But that section is all just elbows, no pipe. So, it doesn't matter where you cut it. And the pipe is glued into the valve. Normally, I'd say you'd have to replace the valve. But...... A few months back on This Old House, Richard Trethway was working on a sink and he used a tool I'd never seen before. It goes on the end of a drill and it's made to go inside a previously glued PVC fitting and ream out the old glued in pipe part so that the fitting can be saved and used again. It's made for situations like you have.
Ain't nothing going over that because those valves are goes inta, ie they are a slip/glue fitting.
You for sure don't want to cut that right next to the valve. If you do, you have nothing to attach to. As I said before, I'd cut it 1 1/2" back from the valve. That leaves you with a nice stub to glue a coupling on. Or you could cut it further back, closer to the strainer, where the white arrow is.
Doesn't matter much where you cut that part, it's all scrap. See my other post about the tool to drill out the valve fitting.
The operative word there is "might". Normally there is no way in hell you could do that with regular PVC sized fittings. There just isn't one made to go over. BUT... with some of these pool valves, etc they do make them to accomodate two different size pipes. So, there is a CHANCE that might be possible. A spec sheet for the valve would say.
But, why even go there? The straightforward simple solution is to just cut the pipe so you leave a 1 1/2" stub coming out of the valve. Then glue a coupling to that.....
Doh! But fortunately I think it can be done without draining the pool. But you'll need a special tool to bore out the other valve with the elbows going into it.
Yes, but these runs are usually so short the easier thing is to replace the whole liquid tight conduit back to wherever it goes. There is probably a control box nearby, no?
And besides the power run, you also need to make sure the two pumps remain tied to the bonding system. That's the heavy solid copper wire that's connected to the motors now.
Don't I have two options for restoring the valve fitting opening?
a) I can drill out the inside pipe to restore the original ID of the valve fitting ...
b) Or I can simply place an oversized pipe on the outside of the valve fitting, and then step that oversized pipe down to the standard 2-inch pipe by the time it gets to the pool pump?
Right?
If so, the second option *seems* easier (if it works).
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