Does anybody know how to use an above ground pool vacuum?

Question

the picturebelow is the current vacuum i have.

[IMG]http://i130.photobucket.com/album...

Answer 1

That pic is your vac head. Attach that to your pole and there ought to be a hose handy that attaches to the top of that vac head. If there is an end on that hose that swivels, that end goes on the vac head.

Extend the pole and use the cam lock on it to hold it's length ( don't over tighten it). Remove the cover of your skimmer and the skimmer basket and if your filter is a sand based one, make sure the dial valve on it is in the filter position. If it's a cartridge filter you have, there's nothing you need to do at the moment.  Place the pole/vac head into the pool by your skimmer and start feeding your vac hose into the pool. As you push the hose down, water will fill it. You don't want air in there. Pumps don't like air. When you have all the air out and have reached the end of the hose, if your skimmer allows it, push the hose in through the skimmer opening from the pool side and plug it into the hole at the bottom of the skimmer. Not all skimmers are large enough to do this, so you may wind up putting that hose in over the deck ( top of the skimmer) and down. Air will get in the hose but hey...sometimes you've got no choice, you'll just have to wait a bit for the pump to regain it's prime. If you got all the air out, your pump should still be pumping water. If you notice there's no water coming from the return, unplug the hose and wait for a few seconds while the pump gets it's prime back. Plug the hose back in when it does and start cleaning. Go slow and easy. Keep the vac head on the bottom when possible since lifting it and putting it back down just stirs stuff up. Don't take the vac head out of the water when it's still attached at the skimmer, you'll lose the prime on the pump. When you're done cleaning,keep everything plugged in for about 30 seconds or so to clear out any debris still in the vac hose and then unhook at the skimmer, drain the hose water back into the pool as you coil it back up. You'll need to clean out your pump basket, that's where all the large debris you just vacc'd went ( unless you used a vac plate, more on this in a moment). If you have a cartridge filter, you'll need to clean that out. If it's a sand filter, you'll need to backwash.

A vac plate is a device that you may have kicking around and have no idea what it is. It's a round plate with a vac hose opening on top. You can use one of these if there's a lot of heavy debris ( like leafs or small twigs). Instead of removing your skimmer basket prior to plugging your vac hose in, you keep the basket in place and put the hooked up plate/hose in the skimmer on top of the basket. All your heavy debris then gets caught in that basket, not your pump basket. It can help reduce the number of times that you need to turn off your pump to clean out it's basket while cleaning if there's a lot of debris. You simply unhook the hose/vac plate pull out the skimmer basket, dump it and hook everything back up with no need to stop the pump.

The important things to remember here are not to let too much air get in your vac hose at any time to let the pump keeps it's prime and give you good cleaning power. If some does get in, wait for the pump to get it's full prime back before cleaning. The more air that gets in the system, the longer you need to wait and seriously cuts into your beverage time. :)   Go slow  and easy while cleaning. Keep an eye on your pool returns strength of flow since it will be an indicator of a basket getting plugged up that needs cleaning. If it's strength lessens, so will your cleaning suction.