Pool Plumbing: Understanding the Return Side of Your Pool

howdy gang and welcome back to pool school in today's episode i'm going to talk to you about the return side of your pool system so let's get to it alrighty before we get started i want to once again thank you for watching this video also remind you to like this video if you do subscribe to my channel if you have not done so already and please share my channel with everyone you know who owns a pool alrighty so when i first started my channel which was a while ago it's almost we're into my fourth year now um i did a video on understanding the suction side of your pool if you haven't seen that video please check it out i'll put a link to it in the description below this video so you can check it out but it'd be really helpful and understand the suction side of the pool and it might make this video make even more sense but what i didn't do is i was planning on doing a re a video on the return side of your pool and understanding that but i got so many comments on my channel grew so fast that i never got around to doing it because of all the suggestions and uh people asking about others topics so obviously now i'm well over 150 something videos on my channel so i thought hey this would be a good time to do one on the return side of your pool system it's going to be a fairly short video so it's pretty easy it's not hard to understand but i just wanted to do one so you all could understand how the return side of your system works and the typical things that are on that return side so let's find a pool and let's take a look at everything okay so i'm at one of my clients pools and this is actually a good pool to use as an example to show you the return side and the things that can be on the return side of your pool now remember we're talking about a basic system that has a single pump motor and filter we're not talking about something with a secondary pump to drive the pop-up system if you have an in-car cleaning system and we're not talking about something that has maybe a separate pump for a water feature or a spa or anything like that and this one doesn't have an attached spa okay so this pool has a few different features that is very helpful to demonstrate okay so again going back to the pool and the system here's the pump and this again is the suction side of the pump and just as a basic refresher course water is drawn the pump draws water using an impeller that sits inside here okay and it pulls water from the pool through the suction side comes up through this high side up here into the filter it goes through the filter and everything and then sorry about that had to pause the video there for a second because my client's dog came up but very friendly dog so it's all cool anyway so like i was saying the water goes travels from the suction side up through through the pump up through this pipe into the filter it goes through the filter and then it comes out this pipe sorry right here and to the return side and you notice there is a valve here that allows me to shut off different things okay this one has three pipes if you notice okay so one thing to keep in mind if you have a salt system this is critical your salt cell should be on the clean side of your filter meaning you don't want the salt cell between the pump and the filter because that's still dirty water and you can get a lot of gunk in those fins of your salt cell and it's going to dirty it up a lot faster you have to clean it more often so you always want your salt cell on the return side from the filter or the clean side of the filter that means the water has been filtered the dirt dirt's been filtered out of it and then you've got cleaner water passing through the salt cell and then it's converted into stab sorry sanitizer okay so that's just a free one if you own a salt system okay so this one has two main pipes this one here which goes to the returns now the return ports are basically just the side ports i'm going to show you one i'm going to zoom in right let's see can you see that it's kind of in this in the reflection there it is in the shadow see it right there in the middle of the screen that's the one of the return ports and there are several of them in each pool and that return port is where that pipe that main pipe goes to and if you have a typical system that doesn't have an in-floor cleaning system that pipe is going to get the majority of your water flow now if you notice they've got this one turned down a little bit that's because this second big pipe with the red valve that's their waterfall see the waterfall over there okay so they like to have more flow going to the waterfall for ambiance etc and that's totally cool now you could shut that completely off by using this valve and just closing it right a jandy valve but they have it set to where more of the water goes to here personally what i would do if i wanted to adjust this because of the way it's set up i kept this fully open so you get equal amounts to both sides and then i'd use this unless it's too tight and i would close it off this way to shut off or shut down some of the water flow to the waterfall so i can limit how much water goes there or i can go fully open but they want a really good flow so that's why they have it like that the third pipe the skinny one here which has the broken off end this is for the aerator okay so right now the aerator is off and i don't think i can turn it by hand because i don't have pliers but the aerator theirs is actually broken we have to fix it if you haven't seen my video on aerators you might want to check it out but if you look right there that little white thing is an aerator nipple now it's cracked off and we're gonna have to replace it they just don't want to replace it till summer hits because there's no need to because they're not running it but that's another return port all right so those are the three return ports on the return side of this pool now if your pool is equipped with a attached spa and it doesn't have a separate pump to run to circulate water through it then chances are you're going to have a pipe here on the return side that goes to the spa as well also if you have a negative edge in your pool it's going to go that so anything that requires water to be pushed to it is going to be on the return side of your system and that's pretty much all there is to it so i'm going to fire it up real quick so you can take a look at it okay now i've opened the pump so it's going to take a second for it to prime so i'm going to pause while it goes and i'll show you the returns all right so as this thing is running you'll notice the vacuum is a suction side vacuum but you notice the water moving right there that's a return and water is flowing through the return also they have to return to their water feed okay now one other thing i didn't mention sometimes if you use as your cleaning system if your pool is equipped with it sometimes there might be what they call a return side vacuum like a polaris where instead of sucking like this one does it uses return flow water to create pressure to move it around the pool and then it kind of has these tentacles that swim around and stir up debris and everything and water flows through it and has a way of creating a suction vortex so if you have a polaris style or return side vacuum that would be on the return side of your system as well that's it a couple more things to keep in mind when it comes to the return side of your system there are a few different reasons why the pressure in your filter might go up one might be a dirty filter if it goes down it could be it usually is indicated that something on the suction side is not working but another reason that the pressure of your system your filter might go up is if you have a restricted flow back from the filter to the pool so your return side some of the valves may be closed more than they should be so before you panic and call a professional out to come troubleshoot your system check out the return valves of your pool open them all up and make sure that they're all open and see if that alleviates the pressure now if you have a pop-up system as the pop-up cycle from section to section the pressure is going to build and then when it opens the next port or section it will go back down so it's going to fluctuate a little bit if you understand pop-up systems i think i mentioned it in one of my videos on that but that's another reason that this that the pressure could go up in your filter so check before you call a professional or before you panic open up all the return side valves to make sure that you have proper flow see if that takes care of it and then adjust and no if you have something like a water feature and you want full pressure to the water feature and you shut it off to the returns you're going to see a general increase in the pressure to some degree because you're lessening how much water or the uh amount of water that can go back into the pool over a certain period of time so don't panic about that then the other thing is if you've got all the valves open the next thing is make sure you either backwash your sand filter or backwash and recharge your defilter or clean your cartridges and that might take care of the pressure if you have a situation after that and the pressure's still up after doing all that making sure your return valves are open then you might want to call a professional have them come check out to see if there's some kind of bigger obstruction in the lines somewhere so gang there it is that's my video on understanding the return side of your pool it is now can go hand in hand with the understanding the suction side of your pool i hope it makes sense and if you have any questions or comments remember you can post them in the comments section below this video or you can email me directly and as always my email address is going to come right across the bottom of the screen here it is kenny poolschool gmail.com once again kenny poolschool gmail.com thanks again for watching and remember as always to like subscribe and share and never forget have fun be safe and always always always watch those kids and elderly people and your pets around water and i'll see you next time bye

Channel: Pool School

Views: 52,247

Keywords: DIY Pool Service, Pool Service, DIY Pool Care, Pool Care, DIY Pool Maintenance, Pool Maintenance, Pool School, Pool Guy, Pool Basics, Pool Systems, Pools 101, Pool Suction and Return, Pool Returns, DIY Pool Systems, DIY Pool School

Id: d1cjwlnxvo8

Length: 10min 41sec (641 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021