12 May 2024 Equipment and Controls While Thin Set Dries

kimkats said:

Oh MY that is PRETTY!!! Saying that I do worry about the black. It will show any calcium build up. Now YOU know all about water balancing (I wonder who taught you LOL) so it should be fine. You just need to keep a close eye on it.

What color are you thinking of for the grout? White will make each one pop where a medium gray will help them all blend in. Get some grout sticks to play with and see which one SHE likes the best.

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Thanks much and great idea. Grout sticks just like when we did the house ... definitely what SHE likes will be my choice. I'm a little concerned about white staying white. But I love the gray concept. Naturally SHE liked your suggestion!

Chris

setsailsoon said:

Thanks much and great idea. Grout sticks just like when we did the house ... definitely what SHE likes will be my choice. I'm a little concerned about white staying white. But I love the gray concept. Naturally SHE liked your suggestion!

Chris

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... thinking about your comment on the black wall we don't see. Could just as easily go with gray. There are several shades of gray in the mosaic tile. Not too worried about balance since my previous pool I managed to keep CSI -.2-0 without any trouble using swg and TFP water balance. Also, you may remember I hate jug lugging which drove me a lot to swg. Helped that Robin loved it so much she requires it now. So I'm thinking to go to CO2 injection. No big advantage other than no jug lugging and only tweak the valve a little instead of messing with acid.

Chris

setsailsoon said:

Thanks much and great idea. Grout sticks just like when we did the house ... definitely what SHE likes will be my choice. I'm a little concerned about white staying white. But I love the gray concept. Naturally SHE liked your suggestion!

Chris

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Kim,

Looking at grout colors. They make a big difference. White really pops and surprisingly so does black. The top edge all around has 8" inside and 4" outside. This is essentially the "water line" on this pool. There is a 2" gutter between that I can cover with jet black grate material. What do you think about black? Here's a photo we found of black grout followed by white grout.

Chris

Kim,
SHE's with you! Supply and price is not an issue so we have a decision. Thanks for all your help.

Chris

That looks great Tom. Thanks for the information, will probably be very helpful!

02 April Update Spa Jet Mystery Solved

Folks,
I'm at the final detail stage on a lot of activities. Similar to the house project and even building chemical plants this is where I shift gears from a schedule to a "run down list". All activities including extreme detail are listed to be sure I don't hold up a sub and/or that I have all of them identified. I've been ignoring spa jets long enough. Spa jets and how they fit plus which jets are compatible with which brand jet housings and what is required to retro-fit to a different brand have all been a confusing mystery to me that I never had a pressing need to understand until now. I was finally able to figure out that most (not all) jets will install into the standard Hayward housing and assembly that is locked deep in the concrete. So I went with the Hayward assembly since it's readily available at the pool supply distributors. Now that I'm at the point I need the jets I've looked everywhere for the manuals that show how the final tube is installed - very hard to find. Many links posted on TFP no longer work and when you do finally find one, it's almost worthless. Shows a diagram for a plastic spa installation and just has words above the diagram that say you can use it for gunite as well but no information on how. Frustrating! Finally found a superb video here that shows exactly how the whole assembly works, here it is. I know I've seen it referenced in TFP before but I couldn't get to it through the search.

So now to the fun part which jets to use? There seem to be thousands to choose from. Good news is that they're not super expensive ($10-$20) mostly with a few very special "therapy" jets up to twice this). Also really nice is they are very easy to change after the spa is up and running once you know what's in the guts down that 2 1/2" pipe way up in the gunite... definitely don't want to mess any of that up and have to start chipping apart my gorgeous gunite job before I even get it filled up!! I have the 1" tubes protruding into the spa about 8" just like the video shows but when I tried to unscrew them they wouldn't budge. Turns out that's pretty common because it's got the pressure test plug still in there to do the pressure test and it's pretty tight. I didn't want to use channel locks and mess something up way up inside until I understood exactly how this works. The video and some guidance from an experienced builder helped a lot. So which spa jets? I still have no idea. My plan is to get mostly standard pretty cheap directional eyeballs for most that also have a way to reduce flow. I have 10 jets and should be able to have plenty flow but just will be good to be able to turn some off since most of the time we'll have way less than 10 in the spa. I think need to figure out whether the jet housing for my Hayward fitting is the screw in type or the twist in type. Once I do that I'll buy 8 simple jets and two very good therapy jets. If the two good ones don't work well enough for Robin's back they are easy to change.

I hope this helps some other OB sort through the spa jet maize.

Chris

I finally did the volume calc for the pool so I think it's time to update my signature... pretty cool to see the light at end of tunnel!

ajw22 said:

Chris, nice find on the video. I added a link to it in Equipment Pad Best Practices - Further Reading

Hayward redid their website and broke most links to it. I am fixing broken links as I come across them but in some cases Hayward no longer seems to have some documents online. They seem to totally lack understanding of their customers information needs.

I have Hayward eyeballs for my spa jets. They come in different sizes to adjust the water pressure coming out of a jet. The smaller the eyeball the higher the outlet pressure will be - Bernoulli's Principle.

Hayward Inlet Eyeball Removal - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

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Thanks Allen, there's a LOT of great content in our wiki thanks to you and others that have maintained it over the years. Glad I could contribute at least a link.

Chris

04 April 2024 Update - More Equipment, First Pass Raspberry PI, Piping

Started receiving equipment and doing trenching/piping to equipment pad today. Also made a run to @Katodude has graciously agreed to help me set up the Raspberry Pi stack of boards. Plus I got to look at the white plaster he has. A big advantage of this is it really takes on the color of the pebbles so it doesn't really look white at all and it also doesn't have the blotchy look that can happen with blue colored plaster when it gets improperly mixed. I had no idea how nice white plaster could look so we're looking at double blue pebbles with white plaster now. Tiles and everything else will remain the same. Thanks again @Katodude! Hope to get the RPi up and running on my network later this week.

Chris

Really amazing that this little stack of 3 boards will do more control than I need, and is under $200! 8 relays included, if I decide to expand control relays 8 more can be added for $50! I can stack up to 8 boards on one RPi board (the one on the very bottom of the stack.

The big pump, and LP heater:


Almost looks like a toy compared to most excavators but will be good for excavating in the tight areas between the pool and house: