Redoing my pump inlet and outet connections

[miamicuse]

My current pool plumbing is far from ideal. Every time the pool maintenance service come service the pool, if they opened the pump lid to clean the basket or open the filter housing, and shifts the pump a little bit, it will create a leak somewhere to cause the pool not to prime half the time. This resulted in me taking apart the piping, unions and redoing them again and again and again. Furthermore, there is a very slow leak on the pump outlet and no matter how tight I make the joint or how much pipe dope (or tape, or both) I use it doesn’t stop the leak or if it does it comes back in a day or two.

The piping was done very low but I have to raise the pump higher or else it will be covered by leaves and sometimes during heavy rain in Miami we get flooded. For this reason there is a vertical offset with two 90 elbows.

I have purchased two 2" high temp unions which I believe may help solve my problem. I intend to put on on the inlet side and one on the outlet side of the pump. This I was told will seal better and stop the outlet connection leak.

My first question is do I need to keep the two existing unions if I am putting in two high temp unions so close to them? Get rid of them?

My second question is coming out of the Jandy valve is a male adapter, then a female adapter, a 90 elbow, then the union, then another elbow, then a male adapter into the pump. With the new high temp union, assuming I get rid of the existing union, will it be better if I go with a flexible pipe to do the two 90 elbow? Will it help the flow in the pipe better?

[lwfri1]

You don’t need 4 unions to be able to remove/replace the pump. If you going to install high temp unions then remove the others. It looks like your pump in sitting on 3 cement blocks and is not secured to anything except the inlet/out piping. New unions will not fix an alignment problem. Try to to see if you can get the pump secured to a more rigid structure.

The water inlet to you pump also has severe flow restrictions. The water from the pool needs to pass through a valve, 2 adapters, a union, 2 elbows and then climb up 10 0r 12 inches all within the span of about a foot. I can not tell from the picture the height difference between the water level in the pool and the inlet to the pump, but this also should be kept to a minimum. If it were me I would at least change the elbows to the long radius type. If you decide to use long radius elbows then the union might need to be between the Jandy valve and first inlet elbow since 2 long radius elbows will need more vertical space. You might try street long radius elbows if you can find them. Good luck.