DE in Above Ground Pool

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T

tj_shopper

0
Sep 13, 2007
74
Tinley Park, Illinois
Hi Everyone. We just opened our 24 feet above ground pool a few weeks ago. The water tested very well but for some reason, I am getting DE back into my pool. We've been vacuuming it up with the automatic pool cleaner and it's been consistently picking up the DE. This morning, I see DE in the pool bottom again and the pool is cloudy due to the DE.

I'm hoping there is an easy and cheap fix. This will be the last season for our pool. We've had it for 13 pool seasons and the kids are grown and in college. After this season, we are taking out the pool and deck. I want to enjoy one more swim season but don't want to spend a lot of money replacing the DE filter. Any suggestions or steps to try to see if we can resolve this?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much in advance.
 
Is there any chance you connected the filter backwards when you reinstalled everything this season?

If no, then the next step is to open up the filter and inspect the grids. Even a 1/4" tear on only one grid will send piles of DE back into the pool.

If you find a small tear, it can be fixed. Not an ideal solution, but it works. My brother-in-law has stitched up a tear with dental floss and then smeared the whole area with silicon gasket goo to seal it. It reduces the filter area by a square inch, but it saved the expense of a new grid.
 
Hi Richard,

My husband installs the filter every year. I don't think he installed it backwards but you never know. LOL! I will definitely have him check.

Originally I thought I had algae. I shocked the pool yesterday morning and just checked the levels. They are still at shock levels.

Here are the results:

FC = 15.5
CC = .5
TC = 15
PH = 7.2
CYA = 50
Temperature = 75

I think my water is good. When we take the bug out of the pool after a couple of hours to clean the bag, it's full of DE so I'm pretty sure it's DE and not algae. He's off of work on Thursday, so I will have him check whether the filter was installed backwards. If not, then I will have him inspect the grids. Hopefully if that is it, it will be an easy fix. I did search the internet and they mentioned gaskets and o-rings and stuff and I was getting all confused :(.

Thank you! I will post our findings hopefully soon.
 
I'm back. My husband checked and the filter is installed correctly. He did not take the filter apart because he couldn't find the plugs to plug up the pool to take the filter apart. We're going to have to go to the pool store to buy the plugs to do this before taking the filter apart. By the way, our filter is an old Hayward filter, model EC45. It has the fingers, not the grid panels. Do you know if this can be fixed without having to replace all the fingers? Could there possibly be another reason why the DE is coming back into the pool? Thanks!
 
Richard320 said:
I'm not familiar with the innards of those bump-type filters.

You could always try rubberbanding a sock around the return jet. If it fills up with DE, you'll know it's coming from within the filter.
Click to expand...

They have "fingers" that hang down from the top - tubes covered with "socks" that work the same as grids. Only problem is they are bunched together more than grids, so its harder to see if there is a tear.

To the OP, pull out the guts of the filter, and hose off all the fingers, and look to see if any have a hole/tear, also feel to see if any are cracked. If so, you can buy a replacement. They unscrew from the top (about a half turn unlocks them). I have never tried patching one, but unlike a grid, a single finger is pretty cheap.

-dave
 
So we ended up replacing the filter. There were too many broken fingers. I guess 13 years was enough for this filter and we got our money's worth. LOL. Everything is running great now but we have to get our numbers up and get rid of algae. I have another small problem now but will start a different post. Thanks.
 
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