Think I'm Getting DE in Pool

[BigBri594]

Hello everyone. Here is my story.

Pool has been open about a week.

Backwashed yesterday morning and added new DE through the skimmer. I let my Aquabot vacuum crawl around the floor of the pool for a couple hours and then pulled it out to clean the bag. The bag was full of what looked and felt like wet sand. In all there was probably about a handful of this stuff coating the bag. At first I thought it was just a lot of dirt (I have a mesh cover so I was thinking a lot of dirt got in over the winter and settled to the bottom. When you hold it in your hand it feels like wet sand.

Concerned that there was a hole in my filter, I opened it up and pulled out the grids. I could not find any tears. Here are a few pictures of the grids. These pictures were taken several hours after backwashing, adding DE, and letting the filter run. I'm not sure what a properly functioning filter is supposed to look like when covered in DE, but to me it does not look like there is enough DE on these grids. That would support the theory that it is getting back into the pool. View attachment 49516View attachment 49517

A couple of other things about this that may or may not be important:

There is definitely a small leak on the air relief assembly on top of the filter. I've ordered a new O-ring to fix that and am awaiting its arrival.

There is also a small air leak in the pump. I see extremely tiny little bubbles (have to look really close to even see them) through the window. Not sure yet what is causing this. It's nothing major and the pump runs fine, but I'm not sure if this could be contributing to the DE problem.

After I took this photo, I put the filter back together, backwashed, and re-filled the DE. I watched the return jets to see if there was any DE being spit out. I couldn't see anything although I'm not sure if you would be able to see DE coming out there.


Like I said, maybe this is just a lot of dirt, and the DE is not a problem, but i thought I would check with you all since I don't have too much experience. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Brian

 

[zea3]

If your water is clear you would see a puff of white blown out through the return when you turn the pump on. I have a few questions. Do you have a mulitport valve on your filter? Was there a mound of DE in the bottom of the filter when you opened it up? How much DE did you add?

 

[BigBri594]

Definitely no puff of white when I turned on the pump.

I do have a multiport valve.

Before opening up the filter I removed the drain plug and let everything drain out. As it finished draining the color was milky white. And yes there was a DE remaining on the bottom of the filter.

My filter calls for 6 lbs of DE on a fresh filter. Since this was after a backwash, I only added about 5 lbs using the blue Leslies scoop.

 

[BigBri594]

Still struggling with this problem and would really appreciate any help. When brushing the pool floor today, white clouds would form around the Brush so I am fairly certain that it is in fact DE getting into the pool.

Here is my theory for why this is happening and maybe someone can tell me if I'm on the right track. The air relief assembly on top of the filter has a leak. When the filter is on water leaks out and as soon as the filter shuts off you can hear it sucking air in. Since the filter is above the water level, the air leak is allowing the water to drain back into the pool through the suction lines carrying de with it.

I will be replacing the O ring on the air relief assembly tomorrow and I think and hope that will solve this problem.

Am I making sense or am I totally off on this one?

 

[BigBri594]

I have just resolved this issue and thought I would update this thread so others with the same problem may find some help.

My air relief assembly on top of the filter was cracked, and since it was not holding pressure with the pump turned off, it was letting the filter drain back into the pool. Replacing the relief assembly solved this problem, but I was still getting puffs of DE whenever I would brush the pool floor. I decided that there must be a tear in the filter or a leak in the manifold. I took the filter grids out to inspect them. I was going to take each individual grid out to look it over, but the whole filter grid assembly was so old, and the retainer rod so rusted that there was no way to get it apart. I would never be able to get it back together if I disassembled it.

So I decided to do what I should have done from the very beginning. I put the filter back together, started the pump, and added one scoop of DE to the skimmer. I then went over to return and watched it for about 60 seconds and all of a sudden a big puff of white came out. Doing this test seems so obvious now, but at the time I just did not think to do it. This meant that the DE getting in the pool had nothing to do with what was happening when the pump was off. The DE was somehow getting through the filter. I ordered a new filter grid assembly which arrived the next day, dropped it into the filter vessel, turned on the pump, added a few scoops of DE and watched the return. No DE was coming out.

I added about 2 scoops less than the recommended pre-coat amount as I expect the DE currently in the pool will be adding to the DE pre-coating.

It's been 3 days since I replaced the filter grids, and I cannot believe how much better the water looks. It's such a relief to have solved this problem, and it feels good to have done so without having to have a pool service company come out to do it.