Spa valves setup incorrectly

[k2stew]

In what i would say is the understatement of the year it seems as though I have my spa setup incorrectly. Can anyone help me set this straight. You can tell by the picture that my pool and my spa are not in synch health wise.

I hope the images work... Thanks in advance.




Shot at 2012-05-03



Pump influent => Shot at 2012-05-03



System effluent => Shot at 2012-05-03

[PoolDoc]

Hi K2;

1. Pour 1/2 gallon of household bleach into the spa.
2. After the green is gone, open the valve in the 2nd photo, by rotating the handle till it points toward the pump.

It looks to me like your system is NOT set up to have the pool and spa at different temperatures.

[waterbear]

Your spa looks like it is a spillover spa so once the green is clear normal operation would be the return valve as PoolDoc said, with the handle pointing toward the pump so water returns to both the pool and spa returns and the drain handle pointing toward the pool drain so all water drains out the pool drain and skimmers. In this way your pool and spa become one body of water so the spa will not turn green from lack of chlorination.
For spa operation you would isolate the spa by turning the return valve pointing all the way to the spa return side and the drain valve pointing all the way to the spa drain side. You can then turn on the heater (I assume you have one) to bring the spa up to the desires temperature (usually 100-104 degrees). Because of the small volume of water in the spa it should heat up to temperature very quickly
When you are done with the spa remember to lower the heater to the usual pool operating temperature (or shut it off if you normally do not heat the pool) and return the valves to the 'pool/spillover" position that you started with.

This is pretty much standard procedure for a pool/spa combo that does not include automation (electric valve actuators and a controller). You might want to look into installing such an automation system to simply your spa use if you use the spa often since they are fairly easy to retrofit on an existing pool (and they can also control heater, lights, pumps, cleaners, and other equipment such as the Polaris mini deck jet that I saw in one of your photos; and some include a salt water chlorine generator option.) This way you can change between operation of spa (including heating) and normal pool/spillover operation with just the push of a button. However, such system are on the expensive side, especially the fancier ones.