Pump Pressure Issues - Fiber Clear Questions

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L

Louie_B

0
Jun 5, 2010
27
New Jersey
Pool Size
20000
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Pentair iChlor 30
Hello everyone. I'm seeking the help of the TFP masses and I'm hoping you can provide some answers.
I just had the pool opened 3 days ago and I'm having filter issues. The pool in in-ground about 27,000 gallons with a DE Hayward 60 cu filter. I have a loop-lock pool cover that is porous so when the cover is removed the water is very swampy and it takes a good 5-7 days to gain clarity. The process involves a lot of DE and a lot of backwashing because of all the junk in the pool. Its very high-maintenance.

I have been dealing with this for 5 summers now since I bought the house. This summer I decided to switch to Fiber Clear and stop dealing with DE. I took the filter apart and hosed the fins down pretty good. I didn't clean the inside floor of the filter though but there wasn't that much DE in there so I'm not sure if that is causing my issues (which I will get to in a min I promise!). I had local pool guys open the pool on Thursday morning. They were aware of the Fiber Clear product and it seemed that they have used it before. They added the suggested 2.5 bags to the skimmer after the opening. They also added algaecide to the pool because it was so green. (I'm not sure if this is what is causing my issues)

Here is the problem. I didn't realize how much more efficient Fiber Clear was vs DE. and when I went to check on the pool for the first time after the opening the pressure gauge on the filter was at 25psi and there was almost no water flowing through the returns. I'm going to imagine that because of all the Crud in the pool water that the Fiber Clear clogged really quickly and required a thorough backwashing very early in the cycle (short-cycle?).

So I started backwashing early and often which is something I am accustomed to during the first week every year.
Here is what is different this year from the previous openings.
About 5 minutes after a back-wash the pressure jumps from 14psi to 21psi. While the pressure is at 14 all the returns are running great. The waterfall flow is really strong and the spa spills over vigorously. When the pressure jumps to 21 the waterfall stops and spa spill slows to a trickle. The rest of the returns in the pool feel OK but not great. The other puzzling thing is that the water line in the skimmer attached to the pump dropes about 3 inches. It starts out great with the water level pressed up against the inside of the clear plastic lid but when the pressure jumps to 21 the I can see the water flowing into the pump-skimmer from the pool. I have tried doing really long backwash cycles to clear as much of the Fiber Clear from the filter as possible and then running the filter WITHOUT recharging with Fiber Clear and this pressure jump and skimmer level drop still happens!! As of right now I haven't added any Fiber Clear to the filter after the last 3 LONG backwashes!!!

I don't remember this happening in previous years. The pool is always high maintenance during the first week of opening but I don't remember these wild swings in pressure and the changes in the strength of the water running thru the returns. I also don't ever remember the water level changing in the pump-skimmer. (that is not to say it wasn't happening its just that I might not have noticed it!! I learn new stuff about my pool every year!!!)

Is this happening because the Fiber Clear is still in the filter even after a few long backwashes with no recharges. Does it settle at the bottom of the filter and take a few minutes to coat the fins and that is why the pressure changes 5 minutes after the cycle is re-started. Is the algaecide causing a reaction with the Fiber Clear inside my filter that the backwash will not fix? Or am I just being impatient and everything will start working normal again as the water clears? (it is now just cloudy and no longer green. i have added about 10 pounds of shock over the last 3 days!!)

I am about to take the filter apart and clean the fins again to remove all the Fiber Clear and then start over. Depending on the answers I get from TFP masses I might go back to DE for one more summer.

Thanks in advance
Lou ...
 
Welcome to TFP.

It's not a good idea to run a DE filter with uncoated grids, because the grids can become clogged with debris from the pool that won't be removed by backwashing. I wonder if you might need to go to a more thorough cleaning of your filter. What model is the filter?
 
I have used both DE and Fiber Clear. My filter does not have a backwash setting, just the knob for "bumping". Bumping is supposed to knock the filter media off the grids and then redistribute it when you turn the pump back on, buying a little extra time before opening the filter and hosing off the grids.

However, I have found that the Fiber Clear sticks to the grids really well and it keeps the grids coated even after I bump it. I doubt you are loosing much Fiber Clear during your backwashing cycles.

The reduced flow from the returns and into the pump strainer indicate a restriction between skimmer and pump. With a DE filter the restriction is usually dirty filter media. Fiber Clear is great stuff and it catches just about everything. You may have to resign yourself to hosing off the grids more often until your pool is clear.
 
The filter was here when I bought the house so I'm not sure how old it is but it looks a lot like the Hayward ProGrid 6020.
This is the first and only time I have run the pump with uncoated grids. I only did it to see if the pressure shift would occur and it did.
 
Zea, technically the filter with the media is after the pump-skimmer right?
(the circle of the water flow is pool>skimmer>pump-skimmer>filter>back to pool)
If I am correct than how does dirty filter media have an effect on the water flow into the pump-skimmer?
I can understand it choking the amount of water flowing back into the pool via the returns but I don't understand how it would have an effect on the amount of water that the pump is pulling from the pool into the skimmer.
(I think I just created a shift in the time-space continuum)

Lou ...
 
vg3tv said:
About 5 minutes after a back-wash the pressure jumps from 14psi to 21psi. While the pressure is at 14 all the returns are running great. The waterfall flow is really strong and the spa spills over vigorously. When the pressure jumps to 21 the waterfall stops and spa spill slows to a trickle. The rest of the returns in the pool feel OK but not great. The other puzzling thing is that the water line in the skimmer attached to the pump dropes about 3 inches. It starts out great with the water level pressed up against the inside of the clear plastic lid but when the pressure jumps to 21 the I can see the water flowing into the pump-skimmer from the pool. Thanks in advance
Lou ...
Click to expand...
The pump is starving for water. You may have a blocked line somewhere, or a bad valve, or a valve in the wrong position. Possibly an air leak somewhere. The big clue is that the pump strainer empties.

The wise ones are sure to respond with better ideas, but I'd start by checking all the valves to be sure they're in the right position. Then I'd look at the strainer cover gasket. See if it's cracked or hard and brittle. Then I'd try shoving a drain king into the line from the basket to the pool and blast things out. Could be just a wad of leaves or something.
 
I thought that there might be something clogging the lines.
There are 2 skimmers in the pool and one bottom drain.
The bottom drain has a home run back to the pump with a ball valve at the end.
The two skimmers combine at one point and travel back to the pump together. There is an on/off valve for them before the pump.
I have tried running the pump with either the skimmers or the drain isolated and the pressure jump/water dip still occurs.
The fact that the water flow is GREAT for the first 5 minutes leads me to believe that the lines are clear.

Which again takes me back to the unknown situation inside the filter.
Is there something going on with the Fiber Clear and the filter fins that is causing the pressure to spike?
Is there a reaction to the Fiber Clear and the Algaecide that is causing it to gum up the inside of my filter?
If something is going on in the filter would that cause the drop in water level inside the pump skimmer?
 
I'm no technical guru, but this is how I think it happens ...
When the grids are dirty the flow of water slows and pressure builds inside the filter. The motor is still cranking at the same speed, but the pressure build up prevents the water from moving through the grids and any pockets of air trapped in the filter are forced into the pump basket which slows the flow of water into the pump.

I am basing this hypothesis on personal experience with both Fiber Clear and DE. When the media has filtered its maximum load of dirt and debris, return flow decreases, internal pressure increases, and the pump begins to starve for water. I turn off the pump, hose out all the dirty media from the grids and the filter body, reassemble filter,recharge with fresh media, and the pressure is back to normal, return flow is strong, and the pump basket stays full of water.

I find Fiber Clear to be a little more efficient at removing dirt/debris from the water so when I am battling a dirty pool I may completely clean the grids and recharge every day until the majority of the algae is filtered out. Even a slight algae bloom will clog the filter fairly quickly. I like using the Fiber Clear because it is lighter and easier to handle and takes up less space in the garage. I don't use algaecide so I couldn't say if its texture or viscosity accelerates the clogging process or not.
 
Zea
I am at the point where I am going to take the filter apart and clean the grids completely. I haven't recharged the filter since the yesterday morning and I've done some long backwashes since then. I'm thinking that Fiber Clear is a really stuboorn substance.

If I am still having problems after taking the filter apart I will let you guys know.

Stay Tuned ... and thanks for being involved.

Lou ...
 

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I'm late to the dance but will chime in nevertheless. I think zea and Richard are both right.......I think you may have two problems that require fixing.

1. You have a suction side air leak. If the system is air tight, no air pocket can get in the system. (duh!) There are not too many pools that are truly air tight but they all should be (mine is not...but I'm workin' on it)

So that air that is gathering (in the filter) is coming in from the suction side because the pressure side produces water leaks....not air.

2. The next issue is that air is unable to be forced thru the filter and back to the atmosphere via the returns.
Why it can't get thru that filter, I don't know.....obviously there is some blockage in there.

So, as the air builds up, it reaches enough volume (and psi) so that it can finally "belch" backwards through the pump, uncovering the impellor and dropping prime.

As you may have suspected by now, I am "shooting from the hip" here but the scenario seems plausible to me.

If you shut the pump down after one minute of run time (in other words with the pump strainer basket full of water) how long does it take for the basket to drain?
 
It takes the pump-skimmer about 5 minutes to lose about 3 inches of water level. The impeller is never exposed however.
I'm going to bet that I've always had this problem but using the Fiber Clear in the filter has exasperated it. It is probably clogging up the DE filter and not letting the accumulated air back through to the returns. This is causing it to get stuck in the pump area.

I'm about to take the DE filter apart now.

Stay Tuned
 
pump-skimmer
Click to expand...
I know what you mean but calling it the pump strainer basket will keep our lingo on the same page.......the skimmers are only out at the pool.

I think you're on to something about the Fiber Clear exacerbating the problem. That said, if you can find that air leak, it should solve the problem regardless.
 
Geekgranny's Fiber Clear Saga:

Until reading this thread I thought my issues with getting the Fiber Clear off my Quad cartridges (Quad uses cartridges rather than grids) was due to the unique properties of our dust and the amounts that go into the pool 24/7. We live 7 miles north of three of the 10 largest cement factories in the US. Most of the raw materials for the cement are mined locally, from open pits. It is very dusty here and lots of year round wind. A gentle breeze here is 20 mph. I'm thinking differently now.

I've been using Fiber Clear since last summer. Before I started using it in my old filter, I opened it, hosed the grids, soaked them overnight in auto dishwasher detergent, rinsed well, then soaked in MA/water solution for several hours. I then replaced four of the grids that were beginning to get excessive wear. The grids were overdue anyway for a good cleaning and checkup.

My water was in relatively good shape as it was middle of summer and not an opening so there was far less amounts of stuff to filter out. BUT ..... FiClear started filtering even better than DE as evidenced by the increased clarity of the water.

I live in an extremely dusty/windy environment with pounds of microscopic dust, sand and silt going into my pool in a 24 hour period, via wind and carried into the pool by the large and GIANT dogs swimming and playing, and back into the pool, over and over during the day.

My old filter was undersized and pump oversized. So there was a lot of pressure on the filter from the big pump.

Using DE, starting with a freshly cleaned filter, I could go a couple weeks between backwashings. As the DE began to remain in the filter, over time, and bunches of backwashings, the time between backwashing was one week. Backwashing DE out does not remove all of it so over time the filter can retain as much or more than half the DE called for when filter grids are fresh from hosing and soaking. (I had used and maintained this filter and old pump since 1986, so I was very familiar with their idiosyncrasies.)

So I switched to Fiber Clear with very well cleaned grids, with four of them new. Immediately I had to start backwashing weekly. Then as we went into Fall the time between backwashings became less and less until January when I was having to backwash almost every day AND the filter pressure was not going back down to newly cleaned pressure. The starting pressure, after a backwash, began getting higher and higher over time.

It was hard to tell how much media was coming out when backwashing but probably very little towards the end.

I didn't open the filter because the filter was located under the deck. All the years, since we've been here, since 1986, the filter had to be disengaged from the system and hauled out from under the deck to get the top off. So, over the years, using DE, I only opened it to do a good cleaning and inspection once in Spring and once in Fall.

Early February 2010 we had a record BIG freeze predicted. In the past, during especially unusually hard freezes, I have had certain parts of the system freeze crack, even with water moving. So I just shut down the system, drained everything, wrapped exposed pipes and valves with heat tape, and insulted the heck out of everything. My pumping station is below pool level, or "flooded system" so when a partial shut down of system is done there are still water pipes and valves that have water in them. Most people don't "close" their pool around here as our winters are usually very mild.

I kept the water circulating and balanced using two submersible pumps and circulated and filtered using an Aquabot, with fine bags. As the water started warming I put two big Slime Bags on end of return hoses to filter the calcium that started releasing en mass from the pool surfaces (another story).

In March I had my new way upsized filter (Pentair Quad 80 DE) and new pump (Pentair Intelliflo VF) here and ready to be put into the system. By that time the water was very cloudy with the released calcium. NO ALGAE as water was kept balanced all winter.

I cut the old filter and pump out of system and kept the submersible pumps, with Slime Bags, circulating water and filtering 24/7. In addition the Aquabot ran, filtering and circulating, as much as ten hours a day.

So, "Favorite Most Trusted" pool guy, came, spent a whole afternoon, removing almost 30 years of Frankenplumbing, upped the pipes at pumping station to 2", installed the new pump, and installed the new BIG filter out from under the deck.

Next day I loaded the Fiber Clear and began filtering out the released calcium scale. It took two weeks to clear the pool, running the pump pretty low speed (better filtering and much less pressure at filter). During that time I had to backwash a couple of times, which I expected due to the amounts almost microscopic calcium and massive amounts of our microscopic clay and chalk dust blowing into the pool.

Pool finally cleared. Continued to run pump at pretty low speed. At fourth backwash the filter pressure did not go down a whole lot. This is backwashing many inches of water out of the pool. So I opened the filter and it appeared that nothing had backwashed out during the last backwash. I hosed the cartridges off (Quad uses cartridges instead of grids)

One week went by and filter needed a backwash. That took it down almost to clean psi. Next backwash psi reduced less, and so on.

So I took filter apart again and had to work pretty hard to get the media and "cement" dust released using a brass fitting on hose that produced a strong stream of water. I then soaked the grids in dishwashing detergent for a couple of days. (Time soaking was weather related as we were having intense lightening storms with gale force winds.)

My pump demands a backwash before the filter pressure goes higher than what I set for starting pressure of filter. After the last opening and good cleaning and soaking, I back washed using a lot of water to get psi down but not all the way back to well cleaned and soaked. Second backwash it didn't go down much so I didn't add any media. (I knew there was plenty in there and my dust, that is mixed with the FibClear is very similar to DE.) Next backwash I used 9" of water from pool, using various backwash gallons per minute flow, from 20 gpm all the way up to 100 gpm. The filter psi did not go down to "clean" pressure so I put in only half of the FibClear.

This afternoon I'm not even going to bother with backwashing. I'm going to open filter and hose off the cartridges and soak if necessary. It takes lots of water to get the stuff off the cartridges.

I've been meaning to call Fiber Clear and Pentair about this issue. I did send an email to Fiber Clear and received an immediate response from them. They were interested in my keeping them advised about my experiences. I haven't done that though but will.

I have pictures and will post them.

Out this way, due to our "dustbowl" environment, mostly due to the cement factories and high winds DE filters are the norm. I asked my "Favorite Most Trusted" pool guy it any of his customer have the Quad filters. He said that most people, out here, think they are too much trouble. In fact he had just replaced a new Quad, with a vertical grid filter just that week.

So, I love the BIG Quad, and the Fiber Clear. I've just resigned myself to having to open the filter frequently to clean the cartridges.

I do have the BIG backwash Slime Bag and, when I can grab the time, will hook up a vac hose to the filter waste pipe to recapture the water, and backwash for hours if I have to, to see if I can actually get the stuff off backwashing.

:lol: Much more than my 2 cents, huh?
 
You asked for pictures ... you get pictures.
This is Fiber Clear at work.
[attachment=1:28ztekku]photo.jpg[/attachment:28ztekku]
[attachment=0:28ztekku]Photo1.jpg[/attachment:28ztekku]
 
BTW...... I'm a bit above my usual psi increase, for "backwashing" time. My starting filter psi is barely over 2 psi when the cartridges are freshly cleaned, running at (I'm guessing here but close enough) 23 gpm, 1 to 1.2 K rpm, less than 200 watts. When I rev the pump up for running the vacuum cleaner, Tracker 4X, the psi goes up to 15 psi at around 2300 rpm. Now that filter is needing backwash, filter 8 psi, at low flow, pump rpm is >2K, and running speed for vacuuming is well over 3K with filter psi 25. It's been a little over a week since last backwash. I was using pressure Polaris 280, with EZ bags (the only bags that will capture some of my dust). Last week I started using the vac Tracker 4X. It is far superior getting the dust out of the water and not stirring it up as the Polaris does. Using Polaris I have to change out my skimmer sock at least twice daily due to clogging from dust. Using Tracker I've gone four days without the skimmer sock needing a change. The water is even clearer BUT it is loading the filter faster.

Pictures in a few minutes

gg=alice
 
Pentair Quad 80 and Fiber Clear at work:

Second picture is the first hose off, prior to the second one where I soaked the cartridges, NOT using the brass water concentrator on first hose off. It probably took almost as much water as a "normal" backwash. When I took cartridges out to hose with brass water concentrator (high pressure stream) it took far less water to get the "stuff" off.


After Backwash
IMG_3996.jpg


After Hosing Cartridges Using a Huge Amount of Water

IMG_4006.jpg
 
For grins, old 36 sq ft, using DE, seriously in need of dissembly, hose off, soak dishwasher detergent and MA soak.

See how much DE remains in filter over too much time between thorough cleaning? This is after a MAJOR backwash. :shock:

Note the color of our chalk and clay dust.

gg=alice

IMG_3336.jpg
 
OK, did a thorough power wash of all the fins.
Now the question is do I go back to DE or try the Fiber Clear again?
The pool is not swampy at this point but its very cloudy.
I'm thinking of trying the Fiber Clear again but I'm scared because I will not be able to babysit the pump during business hours!!!

Do you guy/gals think this was Fiber Clear doing its job too efficiently with a very swampy pool?

Lou ...
 

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