How DE/cellulose gets distributed

[ddas]

Yesterday I opened my filter to clean it out. I put it back together, and added the approx. correct amount of cellulose (I eyeballed it), then I vacuumed my pool.

Today I unfortunately noticed a small leak in the corner of the filter. (I had skipped the step of re-lubing the o-ring and I'm sure that's what it was.) So today I opened it up again to fix it. When I opened the filter to re-set things, this is what I saw:

http://imgur.com/7VksAf1

Is this correct? It seems like the cellulose is very unevenly distributed. Large areas of the fins have no coating at all. I have no idea if it takes the cellulose a while to coat the fins evenly, or if I did something wrong. (Too little cellulose? Added too fast?)

Secondary question: some of it already looks pretty dirty! Is that normal? Some of it is the color of the last few months' worth of dirt accumulation which I just hosed off!

I'm pretty sure the answers to these questions would be the same regardless of whether I'm using DE or cellulose, since the coating and the dirt-catching properties are so similar.

 

[Richard320]

There should have been a bunch more down below that fell off the grids when the water level went down. While it's a promotional video, this shows what should be happening after the one minute mark.

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As long as you're adding the right amount and it's filtering, I wouldn't worry about it.

 

[ranger_ric]

OK? I just watched that and it brought up a huge question. If the fiber clear falls off of the grid when the pump cycles off, wouldn't all of the filtered junk fall off also? If the filtered junk is sitting on the bottom of my filter, Doesnt that mean a bunch of it would get stirred up and slip through the grids before the fiber clear had them coated again.

Seems like with every pump cycle we would be pumping already filtered junk back into the pool. Yuck.

Did I not see that correctly. What holds my filtered junk after the pump kicks OFF?

 

[Richard320]

OK? I just watched that and it brought up a huge question. If the fiber clear falls off of the grid when the pump cycles off, wouldn't all of the filtered junk fall off also? If the filtered junk is sitting on the bottom of my filter, Doesnt that mean a bunch of it would get stirred up and slip through the grids before the fiber clear had them coated again.

Seems like with every pump cycle we would be pumping already filtered junk back into the pool. Yuck.

Did I not see that correctly. What holds my filtered junk after the pump kicks OFF?

My experience is that it doesn't wash off as completely as the video shows. Remember, it's a sales video.

 

[ddas]

Alas, I just realized that as I had to empty the filter before reopening it, any cellulose at the bottom may have washed out. Eurghghgh. I think I'll re-add some. Perhaps 3/4 of the usual recommended amount. If I err on the high side (correct me if I'm wrong) the worst that can happen is filter pressure may be a little higher than normal and it may need a thorough filter clean a little sooner than normal.

Thank you as always, Richard.