Hi Harold. Welcome to Permies.
I strongly suggest that you look for a manufacturer's manual. You can also look up pool design and operation on YouTube.
But this is really a specialised application, and it's smart to call a specialist, even if you decide to do something like sealing everything up and turning the swimming pool into a natural
pond. Pools are huge features of homes, and usually a detractor, from a maintenance and liability perspective; you will only hurt the value of the house and property by potentially compromising the system. You haven't indicated what's wrong, other than you don't know how to operate the system, but the above remains generally true whatever the case.
It's also smart, I think, to remember the age-old adage, "Happy wife, happy life." It is true, forwards and backwards.
I suggest you listen to your wife. That, in itself, will make her happy, hence making you happy. The cost of professional service will be returned in property value, especially if it's not working now. You will save yourself the cost of future repairs if you are walked through proper maintenance and operation by a professional. And if they repair something and do it wrong, they're on the hook for it.
Listen to your wife, and you get bonus points if you do it without her repeating herself. You will have all the knowledge you need to keep the pool humming away nicely, a happy wife, and all the time you would have spent trying to figure the pool system out, try to make repairs, break something worse, and end up calling the service professionals anyways, to do other things, like
gardening, yardwork, house maintenance, or delving into permacultural hobbies.
Again, welcome to the community. Let us know how it goes, and good luck.
-CK
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
