Just following up on my own post here . . .

I ended up installing ball valves as CarlD suggested and it worked like a charm: twist, twist, pop the cover off, clean the strainer, replace the cover, twist, twist. I get maybe 2 - 3 cups of water overflowing the from the strainer basket now.

It was so easy to do that I went a step further and got rid of all my hoses and hard-piped the entire system. I wish I had done that about two years earlier!