To use a sand vacuum, particularly when connecting the vacuum hose to the skimmer, a crucial step is to ensure the vacuum hose is completely filled with water to remove all air before attaching it. This prevents air from being drawn into your pump, which can cause damage or loss of prime.
Preparing Your Sand Vacuum for Use
Using a vacuum with a sand filter system requires careful preparation to protect your equipment and ensure effective cleaning. A key part of this preparation, especially when connecting the vacuum hose to your pool's skimmer, involves properly managing air within the hose.
Essential Step: Purging Air from the Vacuum Hose
According to the provided information, before you hook up your vacuum hose to the skimmer, it's important to get all of the air out of the hose. This is typically done by filling the hose with water.
Why is this step necessary?
- Protects Your Pump: When the hose is filled with water and free of air, it ensures that your pool pump only sucks water when the vacuum is in operation.
- Prevents Sucking Air: If the hose contains air when connected to the skimmer, the pump will start to suck air. Drawing air into the pump can lead to:
- Loss of prime (the pump stops circulating water effectively).
- Potential damage to the pump motor or seals over time.
- Ineffective vacuuming.
How to fill the hose with water:
While the reference doesn't detail the how, common methods involve:
- Placing the vacuum head attached to the hose into the pool.
- Feeding the hose downwards into the water, allowing it to sink and fill, or
- Placing the skimmer end of the hose over a return jet to force water through it until the other end (with the vacuum head) is submerged and full.
Once the hose is completely submerged and no bubbles are coming out, you can then confidently connect the skimmer end of the hose to your skimmer inlet.
Connecting and Operating
After the hose is prepared by removing all air, connect it to the designated vacuum point, typically inside the skimmer basket area or a dedicated vacuum port on the pool wall. Ensure your sand filter is set to the appropriate function (often "Vacuum to Waste" or "Filter," depending on how dirty the pool is and your filter setup) before turning on the pump to begin vacuuming the pool floor.
Proper hose preparation is a fundamental step in using a sand vacuum system efficiently and safely.
