Dirty water coming back during vacuum

[Thump4863]

Hello,

I'm trying to get my pool up and going. It is clear enough to see the bottom and and I started to vacuum last night. I was getting the dirt right back in through all of my return lines. I have 4 Pleatco PA137 cartridge filters that I bought 2 years ago. Last night I opened the pod after I noticed this and they were quite dirty. I cleaned them up good with my aqua comb. Ran the pump until this afternoon until I could try again. Just tried again and got the same thing. The cartridges weren't that dirty at all. They still have the bands in tact and still look to be in great shape. Any idea if I need new filters or if it is something else I could do? I would have thought cartridges would last longer than 2 years.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Texas Splash]

The cartridges certainly should last longer than 2 years. Are you sure it was dirt coming back through the returns? If I recall, kind of like THIS VIDEO and THIS PAGE, there's not a whole lot of parts inside to go wrong. When the filters were out, did you give the base a good rinsing as well? Overall, how does the water look (cloudy, crystal clear, tinted, etc)? Just to be safe, any chance you might be able to post a full set of numbers for us? When this happened to me a few years ago (before TFP) , my filters were overcome with organic material and could not handle the filtering, so it blew right past the pleats into the pool. Very frustrating at the time.

 

[Thump4863]

That video is very similar to what my pod looks like. I clean mine with a aqua comb that fits in between the pleats. Water to start was very dark green as we had a hot winter. I opened it on Sunday morning and today is was a light blue where you could just see the bottom of the deep end. I have a lot of debris and algae on the bottom. When vacuuming over it I'm getting green from what looks like the bottom shooting out of all the jets. If I quit vacuuming it stops the shooting back into the pool. It looks like it is catching the debris though. After your post I'm thinking I may need to wait until the water is crystal clear before attempting to vacuum, and continue to clean the filters.

My test numbers this afternoon right after I got of work were:
FC - 5
CC - .5
TA - 100
PH - 7.5
CYA - 10

 

[Texas Splash]

Thump, I think you answered our question ...... algae. That's exactly what happened to me years ago. As a TFP member, we hope you never have a cloudy pool, see ANY green dust or debris, or have any organic material clogging-up your filter. So how do you fix the problem? .... a SLAM (link below). It's the best way to knockout that algae and clear-up your filters for better filtration. Remember, the filters will never remove green from a pool, it's all chlorination.

Now your CYA is very low, so you will struggle to maintain a good FC level from the sun. I would suggest adding some granule stabilizer to the pool (via the sock soaking method) for a target of 30 ppm. Then test pH one more time. Before a SLAM it needs to be between 7.2-7.5, so make sure. Then use regular bleach to increase and maintain FC at 12 until you pass the 3 SLAM criteria on the SLAM page (link below). It's VERY important to maintain the FC of 12.

Once you pass the SLAM, your filters won't be green anymore, and you can filter whenever you like. Your pool is just sick right now, and the best prescription is a SLAM. Let us know if you have any problems understanding the SLAM page. Good luck!

 

[Thump4863]

Thanks for your help. I've done SLAM before, so I'll get it going.

 

[Texas Splash]

You're very welcome. Best of luck and keep us posted. Have a nice evening.