Green algae shooting out of return when vacuuming!

[Onslow]

I've been tying to leaf rake as much as possible but since I can't see the bottom it's hit and miss with the size loads I fish out. I hooked my manual vacuum up to see what would happen and things went well for awhile. I would let the psi go from about 15 to 20 before backwash/rinse. Now the psi gets to about 18 and I start seeing a solid ray of algae shooting out the return!

I quit vacuuming to filter and started filtering to rinse (I think it's rinse, I don't have a setting labeled "waste") which did really well at first but I don't like dropping the water level that quick. Have I blown up my filter? It seems to run fine in normal filter mode but now I'm concerned I'm just regurgitating algae back into the pool at a lower level where it's not visible.

 

[Butterfly]

When your turn off the pump, does the pressure gauge read zero?

Gunk being returned to the pool sounds like you have some channelling.

Here's some info: my-sand-is-channeled-how-to-fix-it-t7626.html

 

[Onslow]

Wow - I've not heard of this before! It has been an intensive cleaning this week trying to get a bunch of crud off the floor so this is definately worth a try. This makes me feel a lot better about broken/cracked lateral paranoia.

I'll check about return to zero here in a bit.

This morning I still can't see the floor but I am now up to a very bright blue compared to a dark blue with crud floating around yesterday.

Thanks Butterfly!

 

[PoolGuyNJ]

Use the waste setting. Keep the crud out of the filter.

Scott