Intex LED Above Ground Pool Fountain. How to reduce water pressure? Flow too strong.

[Amanda416]

Hi everyone! We are on day 2 of our pool set up for the year and we're loving it!! We just upgraded to an 18 foot this year from a 14 foot the past two years. It's been really nice. Today was my first day trying to use this new Intex above ground pool fountain. It has multi colored LED lights and is really cool! My issue is that my 2800gph sand pump provides a flow that's WAY too strong for this fountain. It sprays wayyyyy out. It's like being rained on. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could reduce the flow or divert half to the return fitting and half to the fountain (currently I can only use one or the other so in this photo, the fountain is attached, the intex plunger valve for the return is off and just hanging from the pool) to make the water shoot out less? I'd really rather not deal with hard plumbing anything if I can avoid it.

Please excuse the mess. As I mentioned, this is just day 2 so it's still quite muddy from the tractor leveling work.

 

[duraleigh]

To modify the output, you need a valve in the system somewhere....no way to get around that.

 

[Amanda416]

Would this be bad for the sand pump? I don't want to reduce the flow to the point that it would back up my pump or something.

 

[mas985]

If you put a 3-way valve between the fountain and a return, you can control the flow to the fountain without affecting the pump very much. Or just tee the pump outlet with the fountain and a pool return and put a valve on the fountain and return so you can control the flow to both.

 

[thepoolman]

Maybe a bigger eyeball in the pool return? Or just take the eyeball out completely?