Switching From Sand To Cartridge

[Sea Speed]

We don't have much yard but we have lots of forest

 

[Newdude]

'Yard' is subjective. My old acre yard started with 160 oaks and was both 'yard' and 'total blackout canopy forrest'.

The good news is that any filter will be amazing once it starts picking up the tree dustings and debris. The bad new is there will be alot of crud to filter.

You want 500+ sq ft carts (if going that way) and hairnets in the skimmers will stop a bunch from getting to the filter.

 

[Darin]

If you just want to spend money, get a VSP to save money. I would not replace a good sand filter just because it old.
As big as your filter is you could use laterals from my hayward sand filter, mine is old and works well. your ROI will be years ahead with a VSP.

 

[revitup]

I'm a cart guy, biased as snot, but fair is still fair. It's the Chevy / Ford/ Mopar debate when all we need is to get to the grocery store. All 3 will get you there fine, and our bickering about the rest of it is purely personal preference.

All 3 filters pick up your yard debris as a constant, no matter which way you go. That crud gets trapped and filters even finer crud, so IMO, your yard decides how fine you can filter. The only question is how quickly it's 'slightly dirty' and filtering to the yards parameters when the filter is cleaned.

I’ll never see any advantage of cartridge over sand. A sand filter takes 5 minutes to clean with no mess and effort and just 50 cents worth of water, compared to 30 minutes with a cartridge filter and probably using almost the same amount of water to hose the filter off. 50 cents worth of water to clean a filter, rather than 30 mins of disassembly labor, any day of the week.
If you use skimmer socks with a sand filter, or run a robot, you hardly ever need to backwash. If you're not regularly using clarifiers, flocs, or other potentially problematic pool store recommendations the sand will out last the filter, or even the pool itself, compared to having to buy new cartridges every couple years or so. Regarding the micron size filtering argument, I guarantee not one person here would be able to tell what kind of filter you're running just by looking at your water or swimming in your pool.

 

[Newdude]

50 cents worth of water to clean a filter, rather than 30 mins of disassembly labor, any day of the week.

My taking the carts out are the equivalent of you doing a deep clean (or same with DE). It should be done once a season for all. Carts don't have the little cleans in between the big ones.

I clean mine after the spring just because and also at the end of the season just because. Going by PSI / flow, I could probably go 2 years before it needed it. If using hairnets, maybe 4 years. Lol.

But the key is that yours isn't a chore to you. It's a terrific choice if you like it.

 

[Sea Speed]

I already bought the cartridge filter. The sand filter IS coming out. There are problems with it and it is dumping stuff back in to my pool. I've already repaired the MPV where I thought the problem lied and the problem persists. Im not going to mess with repairing this filter. She gone.

 

[Newdude]

Most who have switched from sand or DE have kicked themselves for not doing it sooner. May the streak continue.

 

[revitup]

My taking the carts out are the equivalent of you doing a deep clean (or same with DE). It should be done once a season for all. Carts don't have the little cleans in between the big ones.

I clean mine after the spring just because and also at the end of the season just because. Going by PSI / flow, I could probably go 2 years before it needed it. If using hairnets, maybe 4 years. Lol.

But the key is that yours isn't a chore to you. It's a terrific choice if you like it.

DE does seem to be a pain. Don’t know why anyone would want that bother.
I don’t ’deep clean’. Never have. Between the skimmer nets, robot vac, and never using floc or any other magic pool store potions, there just isn’t any need.

 

[Flying Tivo]

Hairnets on skimmer basket is the best since sliced bread. I have a sandfilter with zeolite and backwash once or twice a year depending on rainfall.

 

[Lake Placid]

DE does seem to be a pain. Don’t know why anyone would want that bother.

It's not bad at all. I usually don't backwash all year and it takes 40 minutes when I'm winterizing to pull the grids and clean the entire filter like new to get ready for spring. Now if you want to talk about open vacuum DE systems....yeah that's a pain.