Hi,

I inherited my Mom's house which has a 28,000 in-ground pool. I'm not sure I'm keeping it, so trying to keep costs to a minimum. I'm an experienced DIY'er with household plumbing - I've replaced the water heater at the house myself, for example. Anyway, it looks like the pool filter (30+ years old) needs replacing. The pool heater is again a 30+ year old Teledyne, with cast-iron "headers" with about 6 feet of 2" copper pipe leading to the old heater, which is all stainless steel. The backwash valve is also copper (brass? Can't tell through the discoloring.)

Anyway, of course all new pool filters use plastic pipe connectors. I've been told by a reputable pool service guy that the old heater gets quite hot, so a certain amount of copper pipe should be left on the existing heater before transitioning to plastic.

So the questions are:

1. How much copper should be left on the hot-water output side before transitioning to plastic?
2. Do the "compression" style copper-to-PVC adapters really work? For example, what if the copper is slightly out-of-round? OR
3. Is it better to sweat on a threaded copper connector and then use a threaded PVC coupler? I'm experienced in sweating copper pipe, so this is no problem except finding a 2" threaded copper fitting - not the typical home center type of size.
4. What type of plastic pipe is best? I assume Schedule 80 (grey) PVC is one option because of its increased strength over Schedule 40. Or is CPVC better?
5. Anyone in the Los Angeles area know of a supply house that sells to homeowners that has either (a) large copper fittings and/or (b) schedule 80 2" PVC pipe and fittings? I haven't tried Ferguson yet, which has many locations in the L.A. area - I assume they have the copper stuff, but not sure about the PVC.

Thanks

Ron