Hi, Bill.
Two weeks is too long. Sand filters are slowest about cleaning the cloudiness, but not that slow.
Sounds to me like maybe the filter is channeled. The sand hardens up over time with Calcium and stuff it's filtered out. Then you backwash and disturb it and it breaks up into clods and doesn't settle back into position, leaving big gaps -- channels through the sand. Nothing gets filtered. The solution is Deep Cleaning a Sand Filter
After that is done, you might even try to Pool School - Add DE to a Sand Filter. That will be like putting window screen above chicken wire, just on a microscopic scale, inside your filter. It'll get that cloudiness out. Don't skip the cleaning first, though; if there are channels, DE will pass through and make an even bigger mess of things.
Skimmer socks are a great idea. People have been using hairnets lately, but I still have some knee-high nylons I bought a while ago. Either one is cheaper than the filter socks sold in the pool section.
Not to hijack this thread, but my neighbor's pool is cloudy...it was green, and though he's not sold on TFP yet, it was memorial day weekend, I had bleach, and no pools stores were open. We SLAMed it, got it blue, but cloudy, and once Tuesday came around, he wanted to talk to a "professional". I don't know if he's done anything since, but the pool looks the same still, and the sand filter has been filtering 24/7 for quite a while now. His PSI is staying at 10psi though, which seems low considering mine (an identical pool with identical setup, though slightly different plumbing runs) runs at 19psi clean (20 with the DE I added recently). Does the low PSI indicate clacium hardening and channeling? We have very hard water. I'm sure he wouldn't love me suggesting ripping his filter open, but he does know he's due for a sand replacement soon according to the store.
