Inlet Placement and Direction

Your swimming pool water, after it has been sanitized and filtered returns to your pool by way of inlets that have been strategically placed around the pool's perimeter. These inlets if they have been improperly aimed will cause two or more eddies to form. The downside to this situation is that it prevents some dirt and debris from ever reaching the the skimmer area.

What you want is for all the dust, dirt, and debris that falls into your pool to keep passing in front of the skimmer area until it is drawn into the basket and none left to become waterlogged and sink to the bottom of the pool. This idealized situation can be approached if you adjust your inlets accordingly. Obviously, all the inlets have to be aimed in one direction so that they will be working in concert with each other to accomplish this objective. What you want here is for the pool water to rotate as one large whirlpool.

If the inlets are all set to move the pool's body of water in one direction you must look at the shape of the pool and decide what direction is going to be best. Sometimes the shape of the pool makes one direction better than another due to steps or a love seat alongside a skimmer.

Even if you have your inlets aimed to accomplish this, there is still the possibility that they may be aimed to high or too low. If the inlet jets are aimed too high then there will be an excessive amount of turbulence on the surface, causing dirt and debris to thrash around, becoming waterlogged or submerged almost immediately. If the inlet jets are aimed too low then the desired rotation will not occur. The proper positioning of each individual inlet jet is to aim the inlet so that the returning water to the pool just obliquely glances the surface, moving the debris along without sinking it.

Most inlet/return jets can be adjusted by loosening the ring that fixes the inlet/return mechanism to the threaded return pipe. A small pipe wrench can be used to loosen an overly tightened ring, be aware that these are plastic parts and are fragile, often times these tighten down rings will break before they loosen. Then a trip to the local pool store will be needed for a replacement. Once the inlet ring has been loosened, you can insert a philips screwdriver into the "eyeball hole" and carefully move the eyeball sideways or up and down. Again, this part is fragile too and may break.

The whole point of this post is to try and force the pool to clean itself and concentrate the dirt and debris into the skimmer basket, minimizing the service time for you the pool owner. The next post will cover Desert Landscaping for Desert Pools