Let me start out by saying I have had my pool for 18 years and have never really had any issues. But boy did I create one yesterday. My wife had a woman over a few days ago who had some sort of self bronzer on, which I attribute to an oil sheen I first noticed on the water surface that night. I went to clean out one of the skimmers yesterday and it was full of this oily junk and it took major hosing to get it all off. So, I decided it was probably in the filter too, so I backwashed the DE filter quite a while to get it all out. The phone rang so I shut down the pump while I talked on the phone for a while. When I was done I mixed up 7.5 pounds of DE in a bucket of water, turned on the pump and proceeded to pour it into the skimmer as I always do. After a short while I noticed that no water was going into the pool, and then I just said OH CRUD. I had forgotten to turn the valve from backwash to filter. My first instinct (which was obviously wrong) was that I just flushed 7.5 pounds of DE to waste. Was a little annoyed that I wasted money but no big deal. Shut the pump off turned it to filter and turned it back on. What I observed next was I got to see exactly the path of water flow in my pool as I now pumped 7.5 pounds of DE into the pool. Stupid me had actually precoated the wrong side of the filter. Had I just turned the valve to waste I would have been OK, but instead without thinking I flushed it all into the pool. The pool turned into a cloudy mess. So I recoated the filter and turned it back on. I manually vacuumed the pool and have my robot going several times a day to get all the DE out. It is not too terrible today but still a little cloudy with some film of DE on the floor. Keep taking the robot out and cleaning all the DE out of it and putting it back into the pool. I wonder how long it will take to fix this stupid mistake.
Did I just mess up big time or what :(
- Thread starter kirbinster
- Start date
- Jun 22, 2014
- 47,754
- Pool Size
- 17888
- Surface
- Fiberglass
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-45 Plus
Ahhhhh, one of those moments. 
I can't say for sure how long it will take to clear, but just like when our parents said, "Don't touch that!" .. I bet you won't do that again. 
You'll be fine. :calm:
I can't say for sure how long it will take to clear, but just like when our parents said, "Don't touch that!" .. I bet you won't do that again. You'll be fine. :calm:
Going to waste would not have cleared de from inside the grids. Putting the multiport on "Rinse" would have cleared out most of the de.
You are not alone. My problem was cracked parts in the filter but with the same result. It took several days but the little robot did his job. I had to brush the sides and especially the steps to help out.