pump isnt flowing water after few hours

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Brent Dames

0
Jun 6, 2016
11
washington
hello all. still attemptting to clean up /open our pool. when i have it set to recirc, the pump blasts great, amazing flow and really moves the water. when i shut it down, switch to filter. i can immediately tell that the flowrate is lower (to be expec tedwhen filtering) but after about an hour its very noticeably slower, i accidentally fell asleep last night before switching back to recirc as im gone all day for work...when i got up, the return was barely moving any water at all and the pump was warm to the touch. my question is roughly how oftern will a sandfilter need backwashed while trying to remove dead algae? i know it depends on level of algae, but i feel like i should be getting more than 3 hours out of filtration before it starts slwoing down horribly.

secondly should i keep backwashing and simply work through it?

last lil b it of info, before i got the filtration up and running, i did empty out the stagnant water in the sand filter and inspect the sand... it wasnt hard or solid
 
Have you checked the pressure on your filter? Once mine gets to about 30psi (which is 10psi-ish above normal), the same thing happens to me. Once I backwash, everything is good again. I have a DE filter, not a sand filter, but it is my guess that the principles are the same. When I open my pool (lots of dead algae), this happens after 3 or 4 hours or filtering, like you.

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There was a thread near yours with the same problem, they answer it way better than I did: After a few hours of the pump keeps running, but the water stop circulating!?!
 
Because it clogs the filter faster and you just spin your wheels because now you have algae multiplying in the filter too. You are far better off, killing the algae first, and then filtering it out. And if you are in the middle of a SLAM, there shouldn't be much live algae as long as you are SLAM level.
 
finished up SLAM, water is a grayish/white cloudy right now. i seem to get about an hour or so of decent filtering before flowrates drop noticeably. whats weird to me is that if i wait till its barely flowing, i can unplug the pump for a few minutes, then plug it back in and BAM its filtering again. id think if the sand was clogged that it wouldnt filter again until i backwash
 
Another option is to turn off the pump for a few hours and let the dead algae settle out. You can then vacuum to waste. It might save some time.
 
mas985 said:
Another option is to turn off the pump for a few hours and let the dead algae settle out. You can then vacuum to waste. It might save some time.
Click to expand...
and this is the awesome side of forums. thank you:) never even considered that or thought about it. ironically i decided to leave the pump off last night, so when i get home, homefully the algawe has settled and ill vacuum it
 
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