please critique...
background info
bought a new house that came with a pool and had no idea how much work was involved, especially for a newbie... summer 2011... opened the pool and water was beautifully clear... end of the summer, closed the pool, but it was done poorly (never hiring him again)... i live in jersey btw... during the year, the pool cover partially came apart so a lot of debris got in the pool and i foolishly did nothing, mainly out of frustration...
summer 2012, opened pool, shocked it but probably didn't use enough shock... water turned from darkish green to aqua color, but never reaching the clear beautiful water we had last year... i vacuumed once a week and tried to clean the cartridge filter once a week too...
but nothing was getting better... went on amazon and did some research and bought a floatron, which was supposed to get my pool to become clear and kill off the green... but it didn't do anything noticeable..
bought a rover jr robot but the water color did not change... my thought was to help out the filter by getting the robot to clean stuff... and stir up anything the filter couldn't previously reach...
tried cleaning the cartridge filter but couldn't close it properly and water kept on leaking out... forced to turn off the water flow and the filter and decided to buy a new filter, a DE one... bought the EC50, but had to wait about a week to get someone to come install it...
so now pool is green again because it hasn't been moving that much... so went to the pool store and bought two 5 gallon shock and have been leaving the filter on 24/7... water color is pretty good but you can't see the bottom very well, i'm guessing it's dead algae in there?
question
ok, here's my question... so when i turn on the filter, the flow of water into the pool is nice and strong... but after a few hours, maybe 6 or less, the flow becomes very weak... so before i sleep or when i get home/leave work, i turn off the filter and bump the filter 3 times and turn back the filter, and the water flow out is nice and strong again... however, i don't think it should require bumping this frequently... is it time to back wash already? when i cleaned my cartridge filter, i would shut the valve so no water could come in or out of the filter... but when i backwash the DE filter, should i let water come in/out of the filter while backwashing? how do i know when it's done backwashing? and when it's done back washing, just try to close the back wash hole while water is gushing out?
background info
bought a new house that came with a pool and had no idea how much work was involved, especially for a newbie... summer 2011... opened the pool and water was beautifully clear... end of the summer, closed the pool, but it was done poorly (never hiring him again)... i live in jersey btw... during the year, the pool cover partially came apart so a lot of debris got in the pool and i foolishly did nothing, mainly out of frustration...
summer 2012, opened pool, shocked it but probably didn't use enough shock... water turned from darkish green to aqua color, but never reaching the clear beautiful water we had last year... i vacuumed once a week and tried to clean the cartridge filter once a week too...
but nothing was getting better... went on amazon and did some research and bought a floatron, which was supposed to get my pool to become clear and kill off the green... but it didn't do anything noticeable..
bought a rover jr robot but the water color did not change... my thought was to help out the filter by getting the robot to clean stuff... and stir up anything the filter couldn't previously reach...
tried cleaning the cartridge filter but couldn't close it properly and water kept on leaking out... forced to turn off the water flow and the filter and decided to buy a new filter, a DE one... bought the EC50, but had to wait about a week to get someone to come install it...
so now pool is green again because it hasn't been moving that much... so went to the pool store and bought two 5 gallon shock and have been leaving the filter on 24/7... water color is pretty good but you can't see the bottom very well, i'm guessing it's dead algae in there?
question
ok, here's my question... so when i turn on the filter, the flow of water into the pool is nice and strong... but after a few hours, maybe 6 or less, the flow becomes very weak... so before i sleep or when i get home/leave work, i turn off the filter and bump the filter 3 times and turn back the filter, and the water flow out is nice and strong again... however, i don't think it should require bumping this frequently... is it time to back wash already? when i cleaned my cartridge filter, i would shut the valve so no water could come in or out of the filter... but when i backwash the DE filter, should i let water come in/out of the filter while backwashing? how do i know when it's done backwashing? and when it's done back washing, just try to close the back wash hole while water is gushing out?