(Un)Happy Pool Season!

[sarahinnj]

What a mess so far this year.

The pool opened on Saturday. Needed at least 8-10 inches of water... lowest I've ever seen it. Maybe the closers were over-zealous in draining it? Not sure. about 7 hours to get the pool filled back up and get the filter running.

I've been struggling with the filter ever since. Pressure keeps reading 35, I backwash and it comes back into the green/red zone... shouldn't it be dropping down bc I need to add more DE? I've been backwashing like crazy and can't get it to drop. Is it not washing out the DE? I don't see it at the discharge point. Had the grids replaced last year. I know every time you backwash a DE filter you need to add more DE so I've added DE a few times but not every time bc the pressure will not come down and the flow is just fine. I did put in a home warranty claim but waiting on the warranty pool company to call -- perhaps the pressure gauge needs replacing or maybe they can come clean the grids. Not sure if this is indicative of a bigger issue or not.

Now the fun.

There are so many leaves on the bottom of the pool that I decided I need to manually vacuum them out. This is the first time I brushed off the manual vacuum equipment since buying the house in 2020, and find it mostly unusable. So I got new equipment to vacuum with because my Polaris can't handle the amount of leaves alone. Problem is, I don't know which plumbing lines are which. I've been told in the past but seemingly it was in one ear and out the other. I tried turning off a line to see if I lose suction in the skimmer (I did) so I assumed that was the main drain. So I changed the valve and still didn't have suction. When I moved it to allow both pipes, I had skimmer suction. (see pics of plumbing...would appreciate any theories on plumbing). I have 1 main drain, 2 skimmers, and 2 drains in my hot tub. I can't tell what's going on.

Our salt is very low so I sent my wife off to the pool store while I vacuumed to buy a zillion bags of salt and whatever else I need to turn the pool from green to blue. They said our nitrate level is 20 and to drain the pool to 1 foot of water in the low end, refill, do it again, and then shock the pool before doing anything else. I have backwashed and added so much water to this pool in the last 5 days that now I'm concerned my hose water has nitrates and is just exacerbating the issue! Wouldn't that have diluted nitrates? She returned with nothing but a sad test result report and some shock.

I decided I couldn't consider draining the pool until I could get all the debris out of the bottom since I can't vacuum without water, and was hoping the leaves were adding to the nitrate levels. I have to return to this later today as I've got the polaris in the spa and need to figure out how to turn the main drain off to increase the suction in my skimmers.

I really don't want to drain the pool down. Are there any other options/tips for dilluting? I know chemicals can't fix nitrates.

Here are some plumbing pics if it's at all possible to remotely decipher what's what. Understanding this plumbing is half the battle. Apologies for the weeds

 

[mknauss]

You are following pool store advice so if you wish to stay with it, do as they say.

Otherwise, you need a proper test kit. See Test Kits Compared

You likely need to follow a SLAM Process

 

[MITBeta]

Your filter is clogging up with algae.

As mknauss suggested, you need to follow get yourself a quality test kit and follow the SLAM Process.

 

[sgoosman]

1) Backwashing: Are you certain you have proper flow on the backwash? Looking at your black flex hose there appears to be kinks in the hose which will create back pressure and restrict flow, remove constrictions. Pay attention to the little site glass to determine when the DE has existed the filter/line. The site glass is the little glass bulb on the multi port valve, I've taken a screen capture from your image:


2) Leaves: If you have too much debris in leaves, pollen, chipmunks (unfortunately this is often my problem , best to scoop the junk out of the pool. Use a pole and a heavy duty bag skimmer. Wasting chlorine to break that organic material down is a waste of money and your Polaris robot will just fill up almost instantly. Example skimmer below


3) Pressure Guage: Very possible the guage is shot. Quick check, does the gauge go to zero when the pump is off. If not then 100% certain it's bad. These sit in the sun, rain, snow heat and cold year round and they fail. Just replace it. So inexpensive and easy to replace, just eliminate the concern. I have a Hayward DE filter and replaced mine in 2022. Takes minutes, no tools needed and some teflon tape. To prove how cheap these are, here is my amazon order, only 12 dollars at the time. Just be sure not to cross thread the threads.



4) Cleaning the Pool: Once the major debris is out of the pool, I'd SLAM the pool as MKnauss and MITBETA suggested. Also, you need to get in theDE in system very quickly as the mesh on the filter plaetes can clog up very quickly. Maybe necessary to recirculate by-passing the filter initially before adding the DE, then passing the flow to the filter just prior to adding DE, so as to not immediately clog the filter. Course once the algae starts to die off this won't be as much of a problem.

Good luck getting the pool all cleaned up!