Can find cause of all the dirt/sand in the pool

[nicole12]

My filter is 4 years old. New sand this year. I emptied some sand because my filter was too full with sand and now that it's dried out I was picking it up and after I dump out of my hand most of the bigger piece of sand the other stuff is so fine it's like kids play sand. Maybe I got some really bad sand from the pool store.

[nicole12]

Sad to say it's back. I had the panty hose on the return took it off tonight to test to see if it was the sand being too high. The pump turned on and within 5 minutes it was all over the bottom of the pool.

Could it be possible that the pump is so oversized that when it starts up it forces the fine stuff right through the laterals? I vacuumed about an hour ago and so far there is nothing else on the bottom. Hopefully the fact that the dust comes out right when the pump starts up will lead to some answers.

I turned the shut off valve about 1/2 way off and it raised the pressure from 15psi to 20psi on the filter so we'll see what happens when the filter comes on in the morning. The return jet was so strong before you couldn't even put you hand over the return itself.

[nicole12]

Checked the pool this morning before the filter kicked on. The pool was still clean from the vacuuming which means the "stuff" only comes out when the filter first turn on. I held a skimmer sock in front of the return when it first kicked on, held it there for about 5 minutes nothing in the bag.

The fact that the debris only enters when the filter first turns on, does that rule out some things?

[bdavis]

The fact that the debris only enters when the filter first turns on, does that rule out some things?

I have the same problem with my sand filter. Although, with mine, you can see the cloud of dirt coming from the return when the pump turns on.

I have been watching this thread closely to see if I can learn anything new.

I plan of posting a new topic when I get back from vacation. See if I can post some pics of said cloud.

Cheers

[nicole12]

Well tonight DH got into the pool with a garden hose and he sucked out as much of the debris as he could find. It's filter sand and some DE. It's as fine if not finer than kids play sand.

Check out this picture of it. I had the garden hose in the foot bucket to see if I could catch some of it. Not the greatest picture. The large straight item in the picture is a 1" blade of grass so you can see how fine this stuff is.

So for now our plan of action is to continue to use the garden hose to vacuum the debris out of the pool and see if it gets less and less. I have a new spider gasket on order so as soon as that comes in I'm going to replace it. Can't hurt. The old gasket did have some questionable spots to it. Looked cut up in some places.

Will frequent backwashing also get rid of some of this sand dust?





The reason why we used the garden hose is because our pool only has 7500 gallons and to vacuum to waste it would only take minutes to lose an inch. So it would have been quicker but we were trying to save water.

[matt4x4]

I would think the fine stuff is settling to the bottom of the filter, so backwashing will actually prolong it's stay inside the unit by pushing it up into teh mass of sand again only to have it work it's way back down.
Just keep doing what you're doing, it's probably from the new sand. It does sound like it's getting to be less though.

[poolrx]

Nicole,

Glad you found out what the problem is. At least you know it is just sand and not algae or something worse. I wish I could be more help but I am not really familar with sand filters. Matt sound pretty knowledgable and hopefully he can help you until you get it corrected.

Joe