Re: Pool Valve Control

[Robert L Bass <sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Our pools stay warmer here because our nights stay
> warm and the pool retains the day's heat. In SoCal
> (where I used to live) nights were cool and the pool
> lost much of the day's heat...

In that regards, south Florida is much like So Cal.  Our days are
warm and sometimes *hot* but it cools down at night.  My pool
(~30,000 gallons) has a thermostatic valve controller to regulate
the temperature.  I set it for around 90ºF and it stays that way
all day.  At night the temperature may drop 4 or 5º but that's
still comfortable for a leisurely midnight swim.

> I've read about the salt systems but my pool guy
> thought they were a bit troublesome.  One chlorine
> tab a week seems to do the trick for us.

Same here, except our pool person is a young lady.  She and her
predecessor both thought the salt systems were more trouble than
they're worth.  They may have an axe to grind though, since they
might believe that automation threatens their income.

I could use an automatic valve for two reasons.  First, I tend to
forget to turn off the sill cock when filling.  More than once
I've flooded the lanai and water is an expensive, not to mention
precious resource.  Second, I also travel a lot and it's always a
concern that evaporation might cause the pump to lose its prime.
Running dry for a few minutes probably won't hurt a centrifugal
pump but I think a few weeks would kill it.

BTW, I have an interesting gadget for chlorine dispensing which
some of you might find useful.  It's a PVC tube long enough to
hold about 15 chlorine tablets.  On the bottom is a valve to
control a trickle of water that flows through the tube.  The
valve regulates the amount of chlorine the pool gets.  During the
winter when the pool needs very little chlorine we stop it down.
In the summer we open it up a bit more.  A few days' checking
each season gave me enough data to determine the proper settings
for each season.

I can easily imagine some automator designing a servo-operated
gate valve to do the adjustments based on pH and water
temperature.  For me the manual adjustment seems to work OK.  I
keep the pool girl even when we're out of the country for a few
months just to make sure things are working properly.

Regards,
Robert L Bass
www.BassBurglarAlarms.com



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Regards,
Robert L Bass
http://www.bassburglaralarms.com