How To Hook Up Pool Vacuum
By The swimming pool vacuum is one of the most important parts of the swimming pool filter system. Vacuuming your swimming pool is something that should be done on a weekly basis. Sometimes your swimming pool may not look dirty but there is actually lots of bacteria that you can not see growing on the walls and the floor of the swimming pool.
The most important thing you have to remember when vacuuming any swimming pool is that have a good prime is the key to have great suction. Often many pool owners do not spend enough time properly priming the vacuum hose only to experience hours and hours of problems because they just can not get the debris off of the pool floor. This happens because the swimming pool vacuum has a bad prime. There are a few things that you will need in order to vacuum your pool the correct way. You will need a vacuum hose that will reach all the way from one end of your pool to the other. You will also need a telescoping vacuum pole, vacuum head and a skimmer vacuum disk. Once you have the items that we listed you will be ready to vacuum your swimming pool manually.
The first thing you will want to do before you start vacuuming your pool is to determine if you are going to need a regular vacuum or a swimming pool power vacuum. The way you can determine this is to gauge how much debris you have in your swimming pool. If your pool is dirty with the normal everyday debris like leaves, some sand and sticks then you probably can get away with just doing a normal vacuum. If you however have lots of heavy dirt, sand or algae you will want to power vacuum your swimming pool.
You will have to also close or plug the skimmer that you are not vacuuming with. You can do this by removing the skimmer basket and inserting a #10 black rubber plug into the suction fitting. Some swimming pools will have “vacuum port” flaps that you can just slide over to block the suction intake of the skimmer. Another thing you will also want to do is to set your suction valve on the front of your pump to “skimmers” only. This would only be the case if you had a main drain in your swimming pool. If you do not have a main drain you do not have to worry about that valve setting. If you do have a three way valve in from of your swimming pool pump then chances are you do have a main drain or there was one on your pool at some point.
Now that you have determined that you need a regular vacuum you will want to gather all the items will mentioned earlier and take then over to the closet pool skimmer. You will always want to vacuum the pool from the closet skimmer to the swimming pool filter system. The reason you want to use the closet skimmer is because the father the pool vacuum head is from the pump the less suction you will have, so if you use the closet skimmer you will have more suction then if you were to use the skimmer that was further away. Take your vacuum head and connect it to the end of the telescoping pool vacuum pole. Once you have connect the vacuum head to the pol you will now want to find the “swivel” end of the vacuum hose. One end of the vacuum hose cuff will spin, this is called the swivel end of the vacuum hose. This end of the vacuum hose will hook on to the top of the vacuum head.
Once the swivel end of the vacuum hose is connected to the vacuum head at the end of the vacuum pole you can now stick the pool vacuum head on the bottom of the pool floor. Make sure to look where the other end of the vacuum hose is so you don’t drop that end into the pool. You will be using that end of the vacuum hose end to prime the pool hose. At this point you should have the pool hose hooked to the vacuum head and the vacuum head should be sitting on the bottom of the swimming pool. If this is the case you are now ready to prime your vacuum hose.
To prime your swimming pool vacuum hose you will want to push the pool hose straight down into the water 6″ inches at a time until you reach the end. You will want to start with the hose that is closet to the vacuum head. Once you push the hose 6″ inches at a time down into the water and reach the end you will see that the pool hose will be completely full of water. This means that your pool vacuum hose has a 100% air free prime. Some pool owners like to stick the end of the swimming pool vacuum hose in from of the pool returns thinking that the pool water pressure will fill the vacuum hose faster. The real truth is that this will cause more problems for you in the long run, as more air will get into the vacuum hose this way. It is always better to prime your swimming pool vacuum hose using the method we described above.
By now you should have a swimming pool hose fully primed and attached to the telescoping pole and the vacuum head. The next thing you will want to grab now is the vacuum skimmer disk. The vacuum skimmer disk just pushes on to the end of the vacuum hose that you just saw the water come out from, as the other end of the hose should be hooked up to the vacuum head. Take your skimmer disk and attach it to the end of the vacuum hose. If your swimming pool filter system is running you can also take the disk and place it inside of the skimmer and you will see that how the pool water is being sucked from the bottom of the vacuum head. Yes, Now your swimming pool vacuum is working.
I have basically the same problem as pete. the pool pressure is fine until we hook up the automatic vacuum cleaner and after about 10 seconds the pressure drops dramatically. The cleaner continues tomove but veryslowly
I have basically the same problem as pete. The pool pressure is fine until we hook up the automatic pool cleaner and then the pressure drops dramatically. The cleaner still works but very slowly. Im sure the hose and cleaner have enough water in them as the cleaner rises to the surface and then sinks. As soon as we unhook the hose from the skimmer basket the pressure returns to normal. This is very frustrating. Please help.
Thanks