How To Prime Your Pool Pump (Or Permanent Spa Pump)
- Turn off the pump. Your pump is either operated by a switch or breaker connected to the pump by gray conduit (see picture below), by an on/off, start/stop or stop/resume button on the pump, or is turned on/off by your pool automation, a remote, or a phone app. How Pumps Work!
-
Close suction valves, open return valves. The suction valves are plumbed in front of your pump, the return valves are plumbed after your filter and heater. The suction valves need to all be turned OFF, the return valves need to be turned ON. How Your Valves Work!
- Fill the pump with water.
- Close lid of pump basket
- Turn pump on
- Open one valve in front of pump
- If water doesn’t continuously come in after 45 seconds, close valves in front of pump, if water does continuously pump in, skip to step 15.
- Turn pump off
- Open lid of pump basket
- Fill pump basket with water
- Close lid of pump basket
- Turn pump on
- Open the same valve as last time in front of pump
- If water doesn’t continuously come in after 45 seconds, repeat steps 8-14
- Once one line is primed, the other lines can be primed by:
- Slowly open another line, if air gets pulled in and the pump begins to lose it’s prime, close the valve again
- Wait for the pump to fully prime off the line that is primed
- Once it is fully primed again, open the other line again, allowing more air to get sucked in
- Repeat this process until the line pulls in water instead of air and can be left fully open, only pulling in water
- Repeat the process on the final line(s) until all lines are primed (except the sump line, the sump line is only used to remove excess water and only gets “primed” when there is water under the liner)
If the pool owner can’t get their equipment primed, they can attempt the following: Pool owner needs to purchase DCB -Small Drain Cleaning Bladder for Priming Pumps & Clearing Spa Pump Air Locks.
Video: POOL SKIMMERS 101: How To UNCLOG Your Pool Skimmer Line | Swim University
Once they have this item they can
- Turn the pump off
-
Attach the DCB to a garden hose
-
Open the skimmer valve for one of the skimmers, if they don’t know which valve goes to which skimmer, they can open all the valves in front of the pump.
-
Insert the DCB into the suction hole in the bottom of the skimmer
-
Turn the garden hose on full blast, allow the DCB to expand to seal off the hole in the skimmer
-
The water from the hose will be forced to fill the pipe going from the skimmer to the pump
-
The water should eventually be able to be seen coming into the pump
-
Once water is coming into the pump:
-
Turn off the garden hose
-
Immediately close all the valves in front of the pump
-
Remove the DCB from the skimmer hole
-
Double check that the DCB was removed from the skimmer hole
-
Triple check that the DCB was removed from the skimmer hole
-
If the pump isn’t completely full of water:
-
Open the pump lid, fill the pump and close the pump lid
-
If/once the pump is full of water
-
Turn the pump on and open the valve that goes to the skimmer that the DCB was in
-
Once one line is primed, the other lines can be primed by
-
Slowly open another line, if air gets pulled in and the pump begins to lose it’s prime, close the valve again
-
Wait for the pump to fully prime off the line that is primed
-
Once it is fully primed again, open the other line again, allowing more air to get sucked in
-
Repeat this process until the line pulls in water instead of air and can be left fully open, only pulling in water
-
Repeat the process on the final line(s) until all lines are primed (except the sump line, the sump line is only used to remove excess water and only gets “primed” when there is water under the liner, until the water is removed)
If the pool owner can’t get their pump primed they can pay to have us do it if they are a current service pool owner, minimum charge for a visit is ½ hour of 1plp, regardless of if it is a 5 minute stop or a half hour.
