How to increase spa overflow?

[o_O]

We have a spa that spills over into the pool (but the flow is relatively weak). This causing an issue where the water chemistry in the spa is different than the water chemistry of the pool.

In pool mode our valves look like this:



In spa mode the valves look like this:



From what I can tell we don’t have a valve to manually control the amount of return flow that is going to the spa (but it seems we do have a valve on the right connected to the white pipes that allows us to control the intake from the spa drains.

Does anyone know has a better understanding of the plumbing agree with this? It looks to me like the check valve on the cream colored pipes is allowing some flow to enter the spa flowing from right to left… and I’m not sure what the purpose of the manual valve that allows us to pull from the spa would be?

 

[HermanTX]

On the return side when in Pool mode - that right to left flow through the check valve is your spillover to the spa which should maintain the water chemistry the same as pool. Your mention a manual valve but I do not see it. Since you have a single speed pump, the flow you have is all you will get flowing to the spa and to the pool returns simultaneously.

Some do have a manual valve in place of the check valve or both to control the amount of flow to the spa. some like it on constantly and others like it only a couple of hours a day to freshen up the spa water.

When in Spa Mode - it only circulates from the spa drain back to the spa jets with no interaction to the pool.

Let me know if this makes sense or maybe some better pictures of the plumbing on the return side. It is hard to see it all.

 

[o_O]

Thanks! That makes sense and confirms what I was thinking.

This is the manual valve that I’m talking about:


It’s set in that position manually and only plays a role when the valves above are in pool mode.

 

[DrewLG]

That manual valve sets the proportion of water that comes from the pool's skimmer vs the pool's main drain -- or from one skimmer vs the other skimmer, or whatever. It balances the flow from two sources of water from the pool, not from the spa drain.

If you want more water to spill over from the spa to the pool, you can set the return valve on the left so it will leave the spa return slightly open even in pool mode. The valve's user manual explains how to open it up and adjust the end stop to prevent the valve from fully closing.

 

[o_O]

Ah that makes perfect sense, thank you.

I’ll look into the valve settings - ideally I’d be able to set a custom mode on the easy touch to flush the spa water completely with water from the pool. For now I’ll just look into setting 100% of the return into the spa but drain from the pool so that the spa can begin to balance out with the pool water.

 

[DrewLG]

I’ll look into the valve settings - ideally I’d be able to set a custom mode on the easy touch to flush the spa water completely with water from the pool. For now I’ll just look into setting 100% of the return into the spa but drain from the pool so that the spa can begin to balance out with the pool water.

No need for anything custom; Easytouch already has a Spillway circuit function that sets the Suction valve to Pool and the Return valve to Spa.

If you're familiar with EasyTouch programming, just find an unused Feature, name it "Spillway" or "Waterfall" or whatever, and assign it to the Spillway circuit function.

Oh, and btw...

There are FOUR possible configurations of the Suction and Return valves: Pool (both valves set to Pool), Spa (both valves set to Spa), Spillway (Suction set to Pool, Return set to Spa), and DRAIN (Suction set to Spa, Return set to Pool). You do not want to accidentally set the valves to Drain.

But the Easytouch doesn't know which valve direction is Pool and which is Spa; it depends on you to have properly set the physical toggle switches on the back of the valves correctly. So if the person who originally programmed your system got it backward and then "fixed" it by swapping the names of the Pool and Spa circuits, your Pool and Spa modes will work just fine, but the Spillway mode will put the valves into the undesired Drain configuration. And if you leave them in that configuration long enough, your spa will empty and you'll risk damaging your pump.

So when you test the new Spillway mode, make sure you're actually watching the valves and the pool/spa.

 

[HermanTX]

Thanks! That makes sense and confirms what I was thinking.

This is the manual valve that I’m talking about:

View attachment 450629
It’s set in that position manually and only plays a role when the valves above are in pool mode.

As noted by @DrewLG that manual valve is only on the suction side and proportions the suction of those 2 pipes - which can be either a skimmer and main drain or 2 skimmers.

On the return side - when in Pool Mode - you will always have some flow diverted to the spa as there is no valve on that middle gray pipe.

I have a very similar set up but my pipe from the pool return to the spa is underground - so I cannot even add a valve. If you wish to limit the flow to the spa when in pool mode you could add a valve to that gray pipe (if space allows it).

 

[o_O]

No need for anything custom; Easytouch already has a Spillway circuit function that sets the Suction valve to Pool and the Return valve to Spa.

If you're familiar with EasyTouch programming, just find an unused Feature, name it "Spillway" or "Waterfall" or whatever, and assign it to the Spillway circuit function.

Oh, and btw...

There are FOUR possible configurations of the Suction and Return valves: Pool (both valves set to Pool), Spa (both valves set to Spa), Spillway (Suction set to Pool, Return set to Spa), and DRAIN (Suction set to Spa, Return set to Pool). You do not want to accidentally set the valves to Drain.

But the Easytouch doesn't know which valve direction is Pool and which is Spa; it depends on you to have properly set the physical toggle switches on the back of the valves correctly. So if the person who originally programmed your system got it backward and then "fixed" it by swapping the names of the Pool and Spa circuits, your Pool and Spa modes will work just fine, but the Spillway mode will put the valves into the undesired Drain configuration. And if you leave them in that configuration long enough, your spa will empty and you'll risk damaging your pump.

So when you test the new Spillway mode, make sure you're actually watching the valves and the pool/spa.

This is exactly what just happened.

I put the spa in “fill mode” and quickly noticed that the valves were turning in the wrong direction. Spa began to drain, I cancelled and went to drain mode, that’s the correct spillover that I want.

My settings are backwards. Drain is fill, fill is drain. Going back through your post to understand how to fix this the correct way.

 

[o_O]

As noted by @DrewLG that manual valve is only on the suction side and proportions the suction of those 2 pipes - which can be either a skimmer and main drain or 2 skimmers.

On the return side - when in Pool Mode - you will always have some flow diverted to the spa as there is no valve on that middle gray pipe.

I have a very similar set up but my pipe from the pool return to the spa is underground - so I cannot even add a valve. If you wish to limit the flow to the spa when in pool mode you could add a valve to that gray pipe (if space allows it).

Thank you. I was able to increase the suction of the skimmer by turning that knob a bit more open. So pool drain is the left vertical pipe, skimmer drain right vertical pipe.

Our pool guy had previously told us that the only way to increase the suction of the skimmer was to remove the skimmer float valve. We had been having problems of the skimmer basically not doing anything at all.

My fault for not googling what that hardware did earlier. Thankfully I understand it now - I put the float valve it back in (you can see the pool guy had removed it and left it out of the skimmer drain entirely) to prevent air from being sucked into the system if the water level is too low, and our suction is now a ton better (you can actually see the water being pulled into the skimmer drain).

 

[o_O]

Got it to work - checked the easytouch control panel and the circuit names were correct.. but the actuator valve wires were connected to the wrong ports on easytouch panel (inverted). I switched them and now the spa drain/fill buttons trigger the actuators correctly. Thank you for the help!

 

[DrewLG]

My settings are backwards. Drain is fill, fill is drain. Going back through your post to understand how to fix this the correct way.

[Edit: I see you fixed it. Congratulations!]

 

[o_O]

[Edit: I see you fixed it. Congratulations!]

Appreciate your help. Now I’m going to do that easytouch feature for the spillover, and set it to spillover for at least 30 minutes a day to make sure that the spa/pool is a single body of water.

I had been using small amounts of muriatic acid to wash off the calcium on the spa tile, and apparently it wasn’t making its way fully back into the pool. The spa pH was around 7.2 while the pool was at 7.65. Now it’s all flushed and the pH is balanced nicely (ran the spa jets to help aerate the pH in there as well).

 

[DrewLG]

I’m going to do that easytouch feature for the spillover, and set it to spillover for at least 30 minutes a day to make sure that the spa/pool is a single body of water.

FYI, there's an important thing to know about EasyTouch schedules, especially if your scheduling is complicated:

You get a maximum of 12 scheduled events.
BUT every Egg Timer that's set to something other than 12 hours counts as one of those scheduled events.
AND EasyTouch won't tell you when you've run out of events; it'll let you set as many as you want, but it'll only run the first 12 and will silently ignore all the others.

 

[o_O]

Good tip.

I had a bunch of schedules for the pool (with slight overflow from the spa), and added a half an hour of spillway + spa jets to really flush out the water from the spa and it’s working perfectly.

The volume of water that pours out of the spa in spillway mode is exactly what I was looking for and the jets seem to help it even more. I feel like with 30 minutes of that I can be assured that the spa water isn’t stale.

 

[HermanTX]

The volume of water that pours out of the spa in spillway mode is exactly what I was looking for and the jets seem to help it even more. I feel like with 30 minutes of that I can be assured that the spa water isn’t stale.

In spillway mode - you have 100% of flow going to your spa returns which are then overflowing into the pool.

In pool mode - you still have flow going to the spa because you have that gray pipe between the pool return and spa return pipes however your flow is being split with some going to the spa and some going to the pool.

So in essence, your spa is always receiving circulation, it is just the volume of flow that is different between spillover mode and pool mode.