What does this mean? What does it do? How often does one backwash? I had to add CYA last week and the direction stated to backwash the pool before adding. I know that prior to that, my hubby backwashed once when cleaning the DE filter.
Talk to me about backwashing
- Thread starter Andiejj
- Start date
Andiejj said:
Backwashing is the act of running water backwards through your filter. This has the net effect of washing all the trapped junk out of the filter and into your yard. It's how you clean your filter basically.
If you have a sand filter, you need only rinse for a few minutes before going back to filtering. If you have a DE filter, backwashing also washes out all the DE (it is a kind of dirt after all) so you must be sure to have some handy so you can re-load.
You need to backwash only when the filter is full or filtering is diminished. You know it is full by noting the pressure when clean, and backwashing when it has risen a pre-determined amount...usually 10psi. Filter efficiency goes up the dirtier it is (and water volume goes down) so the trick is to let it go as long as possible before backwashing, while still turning over your pool water.