In the process of beating back the swamp.

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Frayed

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Aug 2, 2013
22
Eastern WA
On May 19 the local pool company, who I only do business with when it comes to the physical process of opening and closing the pool, came out to open my pool. It was discovered that my sand media filter has an issue, and when the system was running would spew forth its sand contents into the pool. They informed my wife that there was an issue, and left assuring her they would be in touch. The pool was already looking pretty bad, I've been having a lot of trouble with my neighbors cats destroying my water tubes; so my pool spent a lot of time uncovered and had a lot of debris in it. After a week of waiting and calling the pool guys and only getting bits and pieces of information, and the lady at the front desk assuring me she was trying to get the information from the tech who had been at my house, I said nuts to this and went to Amazon and ordered a Hayward C4030 425 Sq Ft Cartridge filter, which arrived on May 28. I removed the sand filter and set to work plumbing in the new cartridge filter. I could write a novel of the story of installing the cartridge filter, but that will have to wait for another day. Suffice it to say I made a lot of trips to Ace Hardware, Lowes, and Home Depot between May 28 and May 31, and didn't do a whole heck of a lot of sleeping; and still at this point have a minor air leak on the suction side that I need to deal with, but I digress...

On the evening of Sunday, May 31 I was able to turn on the system and leave it running; so I was finally able to start my SLAM. I could not see into the bottom of either the deep end or the shallow end, and my pool was becoming a home to a large quantity of Predaceous Diving Beetles and other critters. My pool is 28000-30000 gallons, I haven't worked it out exactly; but the #s from the pool calc seem to work out pretty well for me when I use those numbers, so it must be close. I added 605 oz of 8.25% bleach, bled all of the air out of the filter and went to bed. In the morning I was running late so I couldn't check the FC levels, so I added another 142 oz of 8.25% bleach and went to work. Upon getting home this evening I tested the pool and FC is at 14, CC is at 1. My CYA is around 40, so I'm feeling pretty good about my FC at this point. I can see the bottom of the pool in the shallow end pretty well, and the deep end is also somewhat visible. Progress! Definitely planning to try to get established with another pool company for my winterizing and opening needs. Communication with this current outfit is like pulling teeth!

Photos: Opening the Swamp - 2015 - Album on Imgur


Thanks TFP!
 
So I was vacuuming the pool, and the pump basket was getting full so I shut everything down and cleaned out the pump basket, LOTS of gunk in there. After putting it back together I fired the system back up and wasn't having much luck vacuuming, and realized I still was not getting a lot of flow through the system so I assumed the filters needed cleaning. Opened up the unit and the filters don't look terrible, but I'm cleaning them anyway since it's open, but I noticed that from the inside of the unit there is a gap on the return outlet that can definitely pass water. I blew some air down the pipe on the opposite side and sure enough it comes out of that gap. This can't be good??

Photo of the gap, that's on the return to the pool.
http://i.imgur.com/BGd6q0w.jpg
 
I haven't looked that closely at the plumbing inside my pentair cartridge filter. What little investigation I have done has shown that most of the plumbing is sealed with o-ring compression fittings.

One thing about algae and cartridge filters is that dead algae will clog it up fast but the cartridges will not look all that dirty, like they do in spring and fall. But, you should notice a significant flow increase after cleaning.

I had a mild algae growth my first fall with the pool because I didn't know the SWG stopped making chlorine when the water got cold. It wasn't even enough to cloud the water but it sure clogged my filter up every day for a little while.
 
pooldv said:
One thing about algae and cartridge filters is that dead algae will clog it up fast but the cartridges will not look all that dirty, like they do in spring and fall. But, you should notice a significant flow increase after cleaning.
Click to expand...

Yeah, after cleaning the cartridges flow went back to normal. I have an email in to Hayward about the leaks so we'll see what they have to say.
 
Hayward support responded promptly to my email this morning. *thumbs up*

Their representative, Rick, suggested that for the first gap that it should be corrected by simply taking apart and reassembling that connection, so I'll have to try to do that tonight. The leak in return pipe at the bottom of the unit is likely eligible for warranty service. Once I let him know i had purchased the unit from Amazon to going back to the original merchant for the repair wasn't really feasible he quickly provided me with the contact information for a local outfit that should be able to take care of the issue for me. Thumbs up again!


Last night I was vacuuming the deep end and had to stop to clean the pump basket & filter cartridges. By the time I finished the clean up it had gotten dark so I didn't do any more vacuuming last night. Nevertheless, this morning the water was even more clear than before. Progress pictures.

Whole pool view




Shallow end, lots of gunk down there to vacuum, hopefully tonight!





Deep end, it was a bit breezy when taking the photo so it's hard to see, but the water was definitely much more clear this morning!
 

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I think we're done SLAMing! FC this morning at 8:00 was around 10.5-11. FC last night at 6:00 was 12. CC is .5 or less. Water looks pretty clear. Need a good sunny day instead of all these clouds we've had lately... I vacuumed the pool last night and got almost all of the gunk out, naturally some of it stirred up while vacuuming and you can see it settled in the deep end. Cleaned the cartridges and filter basin after vacuuming, I want to keep that filter as clean as possible until I get the warranty service taken care of.

Pictures from this morning.


Whole Pool





Shallow End





Deep end, you can see where the gunk that got stirred up during vacuuming settled.
 
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