Quote: "Now that we've been shot-creted and getting ready to plumb is it too late to add the over-fill hole/slit above the tile? " The overflow is in the back of the skimmer. You might ask them if they can retro an overfill into your skimmer. An autofill is an absolute must in my opinion. I can't imagine having to drag a hose to the pool daily to top it off (temps are running in the 100's here and we're losing 1/2" to 3/4" of water a day to evaporation). We use the autofill just like a replacement for a hose- we turn it on when the pool needs to be filled and turn it off when it's done. The nice thing is that unlike a hose we don't have to worry about checking on it to turn it off at just the right time. We also don't have to worry about unrolling and rolling up a hose! Usually I'll check the pool level when I get home from work, if it's low I turn on the valve and then turn it off later that evening. Our PB actually tried to talk us out of this 150.00 add for the reasons listed in other posts above, but man am I glad I stuck to my guns on it!

Thanks for info..when I look at my autofill I see two holes at the bottom..one is where the "bob" sits and one is, I'm guessing, where the water flows from the pool for the bob to sense..my actual overflow is separate. It sounds like then that the auto fill usually only acts to fill..any drainage is a result of the overflow. Correct?

On a different note regarding auto fills...in addition to the auto fill valve able to fill a pool to the desired level..can it also drain to a desired level? I ask this because my pool's level became too high so I lowered the auto fill level..for the past three days my street drain has been trickling a small amount of water..the only place it could come from is my pool; but I am unsure that it is the auto fill draining vice a leak. My pool is only 17 months old (gunite with pebble tec). My auto fill is a Paramount Paralevel. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

We have an in ground spa and when it was installed they added a low temperature sensor that circulates the water through the system every 15 minutes so that the pipes don't freeze. That sounded like a great idea until I realized that if we had an extended power outage the pipes would freeze - and that would be expensive. So we have the spa winterized when they come to close the pool. Now that we have a whole house generator we could just hook the spa up to the generator but the kids have all left the nest and it wouldn't get that much use. Do you have a back up electric?