Pool is ~18K gallons. I will make a note of the water meter #s when I refill it this time.

I have a Kreepy Krauly which works great in my pool. Pretty much gets everything, but the steps. Which I just manually brush clean with the pool brush.

The suction line just frees up my skimmer to do it's job. The pine trees just dump a lot of pine needles and other stuff into my pool. I need the skimmer to suck in the floating debris before it gets saturated and sinks to the floor, which then clogs up the Kreepy Krauly sometimes (pine needles).

With the new pump & filter should make it even better than my 30 year old setup. The Big Brown Truck is slowly delivering the new pool equipment & parts. I should have the bulk of it early in the week. So, I'm trying to get everything else done this weekend.

The dedicated suction line will be a pretty short run, so I should have some really good suction. The dedicated suction line will be approx 20' in length (straight run) with the few bends to go down to the level I want the port on the pool wall.

Expense wise, since I'm doing all the work myself it will be inexpensive DIY mod.. some PVC pipe, elbows, glue, Vac-Lock port, pool plaster, pool paint (just finished painting the pool today, still have two gallons left), and a Jandy 3-way valve.

I'll start digging up the yard along the concrete patio pad to see what is involved in drilling through the pool wall.