I recently changed my sand on my own for the first time. I got some information here as well as researching what to do elsewhere before taking on the project. I have an old brown Fox 300lb filter. I was very careful in taking out the old sand and careful not to damage the laterals. I was also careful to not get sand in the top vertical valve while pouring in. Now I am getting sand blown into the pool. I vacuumed the initial sand up and immediately saw new sand blowing into the pool. I don't know enough about how the filter works to know where it is coming from but assume it is coming from a lateral. If it is indeed the lateral, can laterals be replaced as a less expensive fix than buying a new filter? I am trying not to spend any more than I have to. My chlorinator box is not working on my Pure Swim SWG either.
Sand blowing into pool........
- Thread starter JBird
- Start date
Double check your valve and make sure it is not on recirculate. I had my daughter vacuum our pool on recirculate by accident. My name is mud now. You may also need to run on the rinse cycle to get all the sand out.
There are a couple of different things that might be going on. First, did you startup the new filter on backwash and throughly clean out the new sand on backwash before running in filter mode? That might be all you need to do.
Second, it is possible that you put something back together wrong. This doesn't seem likely, but still there are a couple of joints in the filter that need to be connected correctly, possibly with o-rings in the right position (depending on the filter). Sometimes the vertical pipe has a slip joint that doesn't get properly seated, or one of the laterals might not be fully connected to the hub.
Finally, you might have accidentally cracked one of the laterals. They are fairly delicate, and even a small crack can be enough to let sand through.
In any case, fixing it will be less money than getting a new filter, however fixing it will be a fair bit of work searching for exactly what went wrong.
Second, it is possible that you put something back together wrong. This doesn't seem likely, but still there are a couple of joints in the filter that need to be connected correctly, possibly with o-rings in the right position (depending on the filter). Sometimes the vertical pipe has a slip joint that doesn't get properly seated, or one of the laterals might not be fully connected to the hub.
Finally, you might have accidentally cracked one of the laterals. They are fairly delicate, and even a small crack can be enough to let sand through.
In any case, fixing it will be less money than getting a new filter, however fixing it will be a fair bit of work searching for exactly what went wrong.
JasonLion said:
I did not run on backwash first after putting the new sand in. I have backwashed since putting the sand in. I did not have it on recirculate. I don't know how easily the laterals can crack. I guess they are pretty old but I was extremely gentle working around them when taking the sand out.
I will try backwashing again and running on rinse and see what happens.
Ok, I figured out the problem. There is an air release tube coming from the return valve inside the filter that had pulled loose, leaving an opening. There is no replacement fitting available so I capped the opening with a leak repair putty. It should be fine but I won't know until tomorrow.
When you put the new sand in, you should give it a really good backwash. I want to say we backwashed mine for almost 5 minutes before ever putting it in clean mode.