Tenex, I'm going to print this off and bring it home and do some more sleuthing tonight before dark. So if I turn the water off and put the multiport position to "close," it sounds like I will not drain the pool. Good. When I clean out the 2ndary basket I always turn the water handle off, but water still keeps on coming, so I've never really trusted that it wouldn't keep pouring water. I'll bet that even though the water IS turned off, it's still gotta empty out what's there between the valve and discharge. I sure wish I understood all the plumbing. It would be nice to know it and have the confidence to fix things. If I decide to have a service guy out, heck I'll take an extra hour for $85 and have him take the thing apart so in the future I can do it. That would probably be a very good investment. Okay, so the pump is the impeller, I get it. The motor makes the impeller go. I suppose if I could stick my hand through the piping at the bottom of the 2ndary basket I would run right into the impeller. Not that I would want to.

You see, "old dogs CAN..."