Nice, I should have hired you to do my plumbing.
Lowes does love me, Then when i found the expansion joints I was like heck yeah! I did modify the return line since these pictures. I had to cut it back and dump back into the return area so that there was nothing in the way of my skimmer. Should have though about it before, but i guess i just didnt realize how dang big skimmers are.
Went with a tunze 9410 due to height restrictions. It seems to work pretty well so far.