My wife and I bought a house in August that came with a pool. I've posted about it a few times here. Needless to say, the previous owner was an idiot whose answer to everything was "Shock it!"
I was planning on replacing the liner next weekend, but have had to push that project back. I was crawling around under the deck today to see what I needed to do to the wiring, and it appears that I need to rip up everything the previous owner has done and start from scratch.
Following is my progress in general so far, and I'll follow up with my questions. To date, I have accomplished the following:• I have almost completely rebuilt a portion of the deck where the previous owner had spans of 38" without joists. This was where the ladder was located.They are lucky they didn't kill themselves swimming in this mess.
• I have cut out the old liner, which I am regretting having done. The pool completely drained over the winter. There were multiple patches on the liner when we got the pool, and it has not been water tight since we bought the house.
I cut the liner out about 6" from the top of the pool so that I could leave the top rails in place for structural integrity. My intention was to get the sand fixed up this weekend and cover it with plastic so that I can put the liner in next weekend. However, we had a few bad storms and I collected about 4" of water last night, which I am siphoning out as I type this. However, now there are leaves and 'crud' in the sand that I will have to deal with.I also have a hole with rust in one spot of the wall I need to sand/repaint, and plug with some JB Weld.
• In inspecting the wiring, I found that the the pump was wired with UF-B that is buried about 4" in the ground. The old and defunct Aqualuminator was on the same circuit. The 14AWG pump wire was 'spliced' with electrical tape to some UF-B that went to a switch located about 18" off the ground on a 2x4 stake.
• The pool is not bonded at any location.
My altered plan of attack:• Rip out all wiring, all the way back to the electrical box by the house. Fortunately, I'm only about 20' from the house, so it won't be a HUGE deal to do this.Once all that is done, I can tackle the interior of the pool with cleaning up and leveling out the sand and then replacing the liner.
• The breakers are all GFI 15Amp, so I guess that saves me from having to install GFI outlets at the pool itself. I still have to replace the UF-B with the correct wiring in conduit for both the auxiliary outlet and the pump circuit.
• Bond the pool with 8AWG wire. Not sure of the best approach for this at the moment.
• Replace the pump wire with 12AWG rubber.
• Set the 4' x 3' fiberglass pad that I bought on which to place the pump and motor. It was easier than trying to pour a concrete pad in such a cramped space.
My wiring job is pretty simple. I have three lights outside the deck area that are wired to a switch on the deck. They are all UF-B, and will likely remain that way. I'd have to dig up the deck to bury conduit for these lights. They have their own GFI circuit that they do not share with anything else.
The other two circuits are the auxiliary circuit which will have two outlets. One on the deck for utility purposes, the other under the deck near the pump for the new Aqualuminator that I bought.
The last circuit will be a dedicated pump circuit. The only problem I foresee with this is that I already bought a pump timer, but it does not have a twist-loc plug. It's just straight three-pronged 120V. It is 15Amp, though, and it weatherproof. I'm debating using it anyway instead of buying a new one.
I do intend to put a switch in line before the pump so that I can easily turn it on and off for backwashing, etc.
I guess the purpose of this post is to look for pointers, or to see if I'm heading in the right direction. I have a copy of the 2002 NEC as it pertains to pool wiring, but I don't have experience with pools, so I hope to draw on some of your experiences to help me on my plan of attack.
Any and all comments/criticisms are welcome. I'd like to do this project correctly.
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