Just was outside in the pouring rain vacuuming the pool. Did vacuum up some DE. It was all inside of the cleaned out skimmer sock. While I was out there I was thinking of 2 things I'm going to do now to help to alleviate the constant vacuuming. These are only band-aid solutions and hopefully I can still find out what is actually wrong with the filter. We only really have a 3 month swimming season and it's a shame to be so upset over some dust in the bottom of the pool.

I'm going to buy a return slime bag to catch all this "stuff" that is going into the pool. I'm going to buy a shut-off valve and place it on the filter going to the return. Right now I run about 15psi so I'm going to restrict flow to get the psi up to around 23psi. Filter max. is 35psi. Recommendations on this forum suggest only raising around 10psi from your original starting point.

Would still love to know exactly what the problem is though.