Do I have a block in the line? Milky pool won't clear

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M

Maria

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May 22, 2007
53
West Chester, PA
Opening pool going ok until now (except for the dead rat in the skimmer basket today)...got the pool balanced and am maintaining my shock level....but......

Cleared the green to a milky blue, and today took out the vacuum. the hose had two holes in it last year that we repaired them with gray screw on fittings, but today the hose was sucking air and two times the pump lost prime and the motor started making noises as I ran over to turn it off. Both times after I took the hose out of the skimmer and turned it on again the pump took prime and started sucking normally after blowing bubbles through the returns, and I tried again to fix the hose leaks, sink the hose and resume vacuuming.

Now I have brown flumes of what I hope is just DE with algae blowing back via the returns, suggesting that the rough starts and stops blew a hole in the filter, similar to what happened the last time we found a hole in one of the filter baffles. Or do you think I messed up the motor and the brown flumes aren't DE/algae?
 
Re: Hole in DE grid or motor spewing brown gunk back into pool?

Nothing you could do to the motor would cause that. Something has to be wrong with either the filter or the multi-port valve, most likely is the filter. You need to open up the filter, clean everything, and look around for tears in the grids or a cracked manifold.
 
Re: Hole in DE grid or motor spewing brown gunk back into pool?

Oh, it might be the multiport--a Haward SP0710 Vari-Flo. I just got back now from the pool store where I bought bought a new "key cover and handle assembly" and valve seal gasket for it when I went to the store, the handle got floppy and "grind-y" and water was sitting in the top and a small piece of plastic had worked it's way out. We've had to try multiple times to get it seated right when backwashing and rinsing....
BTW, I did clean out the DE filter, rinsed off all the grids and inspected them before we started on Sat. It all looked fine then.

Should I wait to go back and check the filter until we change the head on the multiport?
I'm in the middle of shocking, can I keep the water circulating until we can do the multiport repair?
 
Re: Hole in DE grid or motor spewing brown gunk back into pool?

If you have been having problems with the multi-port, then you might as well look there first. Fixing the multi-port shouldn't take too long. It should be possible to turn everything off, do the check/repair, and have everything back on within an hour. If you want to wait before doing that, you can wait till later.
 
Re: Hole in DE grid or motor spewing brown gunk back into pool?

Help! I'm over my head with a cloudy pool that won't clear!

Ok, changed the top of the multi-port and spider gasket, which it needed but my water hasn't cleared a bit and is still really milky and I can't see the bottom step after running for 24 hours

The water balance good, just not clearing. Really cloudy, but blue white cloudy.
Sooo, the filter pressure keeps jumping from about 14 to 24 and then the indicator "wiggles"--and it's rising way faster than it does when the pressure just rises due to getting full of dead algae. A couple of times I turned off the filter and when I turned it on the pressure dropped a bunch--back to say 16-18 from a start of 14--- and then (once my back was turned) jumped up again to a "wiggly" 24! Any thoughts?

Tonight we took out the grids and I will wash and inspect them again tomorrow morning (it's too dark now). But tonight when I was draining the filter, I let the pressure out of the top of the canister and also let the pressure go before the skimmer basket to the pump in order to release the filter cover. Luckily the light was on in the pool and we noticed that DE was backwashing into the pool through the skimmer intake!? What the heck? Do I have a blockage?

If I have a blown grid would the pressure still jump up like this? Or was it because I let out the pressure on the line between the skimmer and the pump? Why was there still DE in that line? I hadn't added any since yesterday. Could DE back out of the filter, back through the motor and then all the way back through the skimmer?

I am at a loss here of how to proceed after checking the filter grids. I've used a whole box of DE already since I kept back washing every time that pressure jumped.

Any advice on how to proceed, and in what order, would be most appreciated. But I'm going to start with the filter grids since I've already disassembled it already.

thanks in advance!
 
Ok:
FC 7.5
CC: 0
PH: 7.3
Calcium: 200
TA: 110
CYA: 10

I will add more CYA once I'm done all the backwashing.

Also, I put a hose into the suction line and got good flow back to the skimmer so I don't think that line is clogged. I'm currently rinsing off and inspecting the DE grids.
thanks
 
I got it working fine but taking it all apart, washing the grids really well, recharging the DE, lubing the gasket at the pump basket and basically re-starting the whole thing. When I went to vacuum to waste, some how a huge glob of debris went into the pump basket. When I opened it to clear it, there was also debris on the other side of the basket, around the impeller. Cleared that too. I have no idea how or where that came from, but something about just starting again at the beginning after changing out the multi-port head was the ticket.

Now I can see the bottom of the pool! I learned a lot just poking around here looking for answers about the mechanics of the pool. Last two years the chemistry was what I needed, this year it was the filtering!

thanks for the help
 
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