EDIT - Pictures and YouTube added below.
I used two Slime Bags, during the winter and into spring, attached to two submersible pumps. Before our Big Freeze I closed down the pumping station and emptied all equipment. The pumping station is several feet below the pool. As I then purchased a new pump and filter, a bit later, I cut the old equipment out but it was some time before I had the new pump and filter put in. I was going to do it myself but decided to let my "Favorite Most Trusted" pool guy do it. The filter had to be moved from under the deck, several feet from pad and on a step going down the hill, for vertical clearance. I'm glad he did it as it was more of a job than I figured it would be.
First off, keeping the water circulating, with the pumps, allowed me to keep the chem all in line. I had done the AA treatment for stains and much calcium scaling began to release from the wall and bottom, contrary to what people say, " AA treatment doesn't take care of scaling." We'll in my case, I used good amounts of sequestrate all winter, and tons of calcium were releasing into my water in addition to the constant blown in silt, sand, powder from clay and chalk. The bags collected an amazing amount of fine stuff but some went through when I disturbed the bag. All winter I was also using Aquabot, with fine filtering bags, so I got to see what was being caught in the Slime Bags when I changed out the Aquabot bags several times a day. It seemed the more stuff that collected in the Slime Bags, the better they filtered up to a certain point.
There was so much stuff in the water, light tan to white, it took my oversized new filter, using Fiber Clear, about two weeks to get everything out, filtering 24/7, flows set to run either ~16 gpm or ~36 gpm. I slowed it down after someone suggested that it might filter better at a lower flow. That was a lot of stuff.
Two things:
About the Slime Bags for returning water to pool. On both of my filters, the waste pipe, that sends water down my hill to the woods, was/is 1.5". A standard vacuum hose, as shown on the Slime Bag site, will not fit on that pipe, even with some jury rigging. So I did not use it for my last backwash. Solution is to get the rolled "backwash" hose, the slinky one that rolls up into a small diameter, a standard one, and attach it to the waste pipe for a short length and then to the end of the vacuum hose, both ends held in place with a clamp. It was late when I backwashed and I didn't want to go to Walleys so I backwashed into the woods. Which leads me to.......................
I could not get all of the fiber media and clay removed totally via backwashing. I actually used 8" of water and tried gpm from 20 all the way up to 100.
Of course after a few minutes I had to close off skimmer and take water from main drain only. After all that the filter psi only went down 4. The pump, when set for two turnovers a day, normally runs around 300 watts. It is now running over 600 watts to do the same amount of turnovers as before. Great indication that all the gunk is not out of filter.
Last backwash I only ran for a minute and then opened filter to clean the cartridges. It took a lot of time and water to get the gunk off. Up to that when I backwashed for past couple of month the filter pressure would go down to 0 and at highest 5-6, after backwashing. So it seems the filter hit a critical stage with my clay/fiber where it needed opening and cleaning better than I did it the one time. I did go several days after the Intelliflo pump told me to backwash and let the filter go a little bit more than 10 psi rise. That may have contributed to the packing into the cartridge creases. Most of my blown in stuff, right now, except for the plant debris, is clay. It will be more silt as the dogs start stirring stuff up and dragging it into the pool.
I, also, may be putting too much Fiber clear in the Quad filter. I haven't found recommended amounts of Fiber for a Quad filter, only for standard DE filters.
I'm going to be experimenting. I used Fiber Clear last year in my old undersized DE filter, and thought the main problem with increasing frequency of backwashes needed, from once a week to daily right before I drained everything for Big Freeze, was because the top manifold had some broken nubs that keep the grids in line. It may have been, all along, the Fiber Clear mixed with my unique mixture of chalk and clay dust and IMMENCE amounts of it year round.
When my pg put the Quad in I asked him if many of his customers, who have the same chalk and clay powder, but few with the amounts I have, use the Quad. Virtually all the filters out this way are DE because of our powder. He said, "People think they are too much trouble, and I just took out a new one and replaced it with a more standard DE filter." I think I know, now, what he was suggesting.
Anyway, I'm going to try several things, in next few weeks. One thing is that I'm going to continue to use the Fiber Clear. But first, after cleaning the cartridges well, with the brass narrow hose end, use less Fiber to see if that helps. I'll post a picture of what the cartridges looked like after one minute backwash at 60 gpm before I opened it last and thought I had cleaned them well enough.
gg=alice
) The only issue I have noticed with it is that although I use the recommended amount of Fiber Clear, it is less dense than DE so the water has less resistance going through the filter. My pump is way over sized for the pool and I end up with a nice, river-like current going around in a circle.
