Fittings & Valves

Your pool plumbing requires a lot of fittings and valves in order to form a complete system. Here’s a quick overview of what each fitting and valve is for in order for you to get a clearer understanding of your pool and to make it easier to understand why it is essential to replace them when they become damaged. 

• Elbows and PVC Tees - Pipes come only in one shape, and that’s straight. In order for them to change direction or to branch off, you will need these kinds of fittings to connect the separate pipes together.
• Couplings and Reducers - Couplings make it possible for you to take out sections of damaged pipes and replace them with a new section instead of ripping out the whole pipe. Reducers on the other hand will allow you to connect a smaller diameter pipe to a large diameter pipe (this happens when you replace your pool pump or filter and the existing pipes are larger than the intake ports). 
• Check valves -  Check valves will allow the water to flow in only one direction, preventing blackflow.
• Flow Valves - These come in many different variants allowing you to direct the flow of water or stop it completely in cases where maintenance is needed. In the cases of flow valves for automatic pool cleaners, they make sure that the water pressure is “just right” for the proper operation of the cleaner.
• Expansion plugs - these are used to plug your cleaner lines, intakes, and returns in the event that you need to close up the pool for any reason. 

While this isn’t an exhaustive list of all the fittings and valves for general plumbing purposes, for your pool, these are the most commonly used fittings and valves and these are more than enough to ensure that your pool has an unbroken connection from one end to the other.