Vacuuming to waste

I tried vacuuming to waste when I opened this year. I could watch the water level drop. I gave up, fill it back up and vacuumed on filter. I read on this forum that you can line your skimmer basket with a couple pairs of pantyhose to catch some of the fine stuff. When I do vacuum to filter my pressure rises quickly and I'm forced to backwash multiple times.
 
So I just vacuumed through the filter. Water in the spillover spa became cloudy. I had. It vacuumed the spa, so I know it is coming from the vacuum water through the filter. Is that cause for alarm? I've kind of felt for the last year that the sand filter isn't working so well. It's 10 years old and I'm sure has never been serviced or had the sand replaced. I intend to do a deep clean this weekend, but honestly wouldn't mind just changing the sand and starting with a clean slate.

Oh, and I added several cups of The Filter Fiber Stuff and had almost no increase in pressure.


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So I just vacuumed through the filter. Water in the spillover spa became cloudy. I had. It vacuumed the spa, so I know it is coming from the vacuum water through the filter. Is that cause for alarm? I've kind of felt for the last year that the sand filter isn't working so well. It's 10 years old and I'm sure has never been serviced or had the sand replaced. I intend to do a deep clean this weekend, but honestly wouldn't mind just changing the sand and starting with a clean slate.

Oh, and I added several cups of The Filter Fiber Stuff and had almost no increase in pressure.


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Stuff blowing through is not good.

What can happen is that the sand gets hardened up into the precursor to sandstone. Then you backwash and break it up into clods and if they don't settle back in the same places, you get big gaps between them where the water can slide through without filtering. That's channeling. Hopefully the filter fiber doesn;t slip through because it'll make a bigger mess.

If the filter hasn't been opened in ten years, it might be low on sand. Who knows how many hundreds of backwashes have been done, with a little lost sand each time?
 
19 to 24 sounds like it's time to backwash...or close.

To answer the original question, I vacuum to waste when I want to get rid of water, or if I have something nasty in my pool I want to send straight into the sewer...like gunk on the floor or something, which is not very often.
 

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