Sand Filter working right?

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B

budysr

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LifeTime Supporter
Aug 26, 2007
129
Pensacola
I have been fighting what I originally thought was mustard algae on the bottom of my pool but am now pretty sure is just fine dirt/dust/pollen. I have been vacuuming every other day now it seems and less than a day after vacuuming, brown dust spots have returned to numerous places all over the pool bottom(usually in the pits and dips of the bottom) I have NEVER had anything show up on the walls, its always on the bottom and is easily swooped into a brown cloud if you run your foot or something over an area of spots. My vacuum connects to the filter system so I know this Crud is being sent into the filter, but it seems like it manages to cycle its way right back out into the pool. My sand filter is only a year old and I have tried backwashing right after vacumming but still having same results. Shouldn't the sand filter be taking care of this brown "dust"?
I have ordered a pool rover jr. which will be here next week and am hoping that it will help to remove the dust/dirt from the pool system.
 
I get those "dusties" too sometimes....many members on here recommend the skimmer socks to catch the dusty particles. It seems to be more of a problem with sand filters - they don't seem to be able to filter the really-tiny particles. Other people have recommended adding a bit of DE to the sand filter. But it has to be added again after every backwash, as bachwashing will remove the DE.
 
I would confirm that it's not algae with an overnight FC test.

Test for FC (accuarately) after the sun is off your pool (don't add anything)

The next morning, test again for FC. If you have lost more than 1.0ppm in FC, you very likely have algae.
 
Sounds like what I've been going through. For me it started small, in the low spots on the pool floor. I would manually vacume up all the spots because it seemed to be quicker and more effective. It began slowly at first with about the same amount to vacume up each day. All of a sudden it was like it would double each day for a couple of days. My readings for FC and CC were good each day but the dust was getting worse. I thought I had a filter problem also until I brought the FC up to shock level and lost 6ppm overnight. I've been keeping it there and the stuff is disappearing, so I don't think it's a filter issue. We've had alot of rain lately and one tropical storm that loaded the pool up with leaves. I believe the leaves are what brought the algea into the pool. I'm also thinking that since it's been very cloudy I'm not losing chlorine to the sun and that might explain why the levels are staying up when I test. Just guessing.
 
I also had brown/yellow dusty spots in a lot of the wrinkles in our pool the other day. Since I was aving friends over, I vacuumed that(and 2 skimmer baskets full of leaved) out. The water was crystal clear before vacuuming but it got a little coudy during the process. Also, the night before I added chlorine to bring it up to 6 PPM, and it stayed there until about 1:00pm the next day(tested before we got in).

I will admit that our pool is not "properly chlorinated" when we are not using it. I let the levels drop to 0 and they often stay there for a couple of days. I always add chlorine to bring it up to 6ppm the night before we go in if we are having people over. The bottom of the pool is covered with leaves after 3-4 days because they blown in around the edges of the solar cover, but the water's always crystal clear so I don't really care. By the end of the day swimming the water was rather cloudy, but i let the filter run overnight and it was crystal the next day. Next time I'll vacuum the day beofre so any cloudy water gets filtered out before the peopl come.

Adam
 
Although I don't think I am losing 1ppm or more of FC overnight, I will double check to reaffirm not having algae(which I very well could still have) My pool rover jr. vacuum arrived today so I will be able to try that out on the next vacuum job this weekend---we'll see how that goes, and I hope it is a way to remove the fine dust from the pool without putting it back into the sand filter. If I had mustard algae in the pool, wouldn't I likely have CC's greater than .5 if I hadn't shocked the water?
 
Well no loss overnight and the water is clear again. The bottom of the pool is clear as well.
It rained most of the day yesterday and I had to drain about 2.5" of water so I backwashed real good and ran the vac all day. Today I'll manually vac and brush the sides down and I think I'll keep the FC up for a couple more days.
 
If I had mustard algae in the pool, wouldn't I likely have CC's greater than .5 if I hadn't shocked the water?
Click to expand...
Not always. CC's are a great indication that you do need to shock but that doesn't always mean you don't need to shock if you don't have them. (Wow, that has to be read pretty carefully).

I cannot explain the chemistry but it is certainly possible (and not all that rare) to have organics in the pool and yet test results that report no CC's.
 

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I'm pretty convinced that my problem is indeed fine dust and pollen not being filtered by my sand filter. This morning when I put the pool rover in to vacuum I only had a few areas that were dirty and I had turned the pump on high(normally run on low speed). As I was admireing the rover at work, I noticed that more brown spots started to gradually appear in the part of the pool that is near the return(this part of the pool usually has more of the 'dirt') Seems like a few minutes on high must of "blown out" more of the fine dust in the filter and left it on the bottom. Anyways.....this pool rover jr. works really good and had the pool clean in a little over an hour. We'll see how long it takes for more of the brown spots to reappear.....
I still need to check the FC at night and again in the morning but my work schedule right now has kept me busy.
 
I wish our vac could do that( lil' shark) it can run all day and still seems to miss some areas of the pool, unless the dust is stuck to the bottom.

I tested last night and the FC held all day, so I cut off the SWG for the night to see how much it would drop and it dropped from 21 to 17 so I guess I'm not through killing all of it yet.

The bottom of the pool is dust free, I only found a few little spots yesterday that needed manual vacuming.
 
Well, I am pretty much lost now. I had a perfectly clean pool bottom yesterday and now after running the pump on high for a few min.s to mix in the daily dose of chlorine, I have brown spots ALL OVER THE POOL. They start to reappear within minutes of running the pump on high. I am going around in circles and at this point have to vacumm every day! I almost wish this WOULD be a mustard algae problem since I cant seem to rid the pool of this mess and the filter sure isn't getting it.
I'll check the FC tonight an again in the morning but still have doubts on that being a problem as I have been averageing only about 1ppm of FC each full day on normal usage.
 
Before I began shocking the pool I put on a mask and went down to the bottom to get a good look at what was there. I tried to get some of the stuff by pinching it between my fingers and it just disappeared. I was trying to see if it was filter sand.
Maybe you could try the same thing. If it's sand you should be able to either pick some up or feel the grittyness of sand.
 
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