'Round It Goes' Pool Nozzle

'Round it Goes' Pool Nozzle

I have owned several above-ground pools. All round shaped. All a fair amount of work to keep clean.

There is not really much interesting or sexy about a filter return grill/fitting. However, with a slight modification the return grill can aid in cleaning the pool! Here's how.....

I find it so much easier to clean the pool bottom if the debris is collected in the center. The easiest way to encourage this is to have the water spinning in the pool. With water spinning, the junk on the bottom of the pool tends to coalesce in the center which then takes less time to vacuum up as it is a smaller area to cover.

As a bonus, the floating debris spins around the pool and goes past the skimmer more often, getting more opportunity to be pulled in, thereby collecting more junk that would otherwise be collected.

To get the pool water spinning I direct the return water from the filter to be parallel to the pool wall. This is easily done with a simple PVC pipe adapter that mounts to the return grill.

1 - PVC Adapter

1 - PVC 90 degree elbow

PVC cement (Not shown; optional)

4 - Stainless Steel screws (1 extra short screw shown; 1 is longer)

TOOLS:

Drill motor

Drill bit

Screwdriver

The PVC Adapter I purchased happened to exactly fit over my filter return grill (this is an Intex pool). I would suggest taking your return gril to the hardware store to see what size adapter works best.

I drilled 4 holes equally spaced around the perimeter of the PVC Adapter. The diameter of the holes were sized so that the screw threads grabbed nicely, but still allowed the screws to be driven home without extreme effort.

You want stainless steel screws so they will not corrode. You also want pan head or other smooth headed screws so that the pool users will not be injured by brushing up onto the screw heads.

Because of the design of the return grill there were several groves around the circumference. The perimeter screws were selected in length and set back from the edge of the adapter so that the screw points fit into this grove but didn't hit the grill. This effectively captures the Adapter onto the return grill without damaging it, and allow it to spin on the grill.

Install 3 of the stainless steel screws in the adapter. The points of the screws should cause interference with the grill and capture it securely. Because the points of the screws only fit into the grove around the Adapter and not into it the Adapter can spin on the return grill. The fourth screw is longer than the other 3 so that it fits into one of the openings in the grill.

Because the Adapter can spin the fourth screw can be aligned with an opening in the grill. It would have been very hard to get all four screws to line up with grill holes, so this approach made it manageable. This last screw is driven home into one of the grill openings and prevents the Adapter from spinning on the grill.

Having the adapter fixed on the grill allows the return grill to be threaded back onto the return fitting in the pool wall.

The PVC elbow is press fit into the Adapter. It could be glued in place with PVC cement, but it seemed to hold firmly in place and allowed me to play with the angle (directing flow horizontal or more toward the bottom of the pool).

The Adapter/Grill assembly can now be installed back onto the pool wall fitting by screwing it in place. The return water will now make the water in the pool spin, helping make cleaning your pool easier!

Enjoy!