In-ground swimming pool + roll of insulation = PROBLEM??

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R

rshady

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May 27, 2011
16
Ok, we just purchased this house back in February. The pool was "closed" at the time by the winterizing company (house was a foreclosure, but they didn't really destroy anything that we can tell).

At one point shortly after moving in, I noticed that there was NO water in the pool. So in the middle of February I started filling my pool (without really being able to see what was in there, etc). I've heard many horror stories of pools coming up out of the ground when not filled with water, especially in areas with a high water table and our water table is basically 3" above our lawn. ;)

Long story short, I started opening the pool last weekend. The water was really dark green, I could not see the bottom of the pool so I thru in 25 lbs of power powder plus over the course of a few days to kick start things. I've had the filter running all week. I put in some stabalizer, 3" chlorine tabs, etc.

This morning I woke up and the water has cleared up enough I can see the bottom of the deep end clearly. I saw a bunch of leaves down there and a piece of something about 5 foot long. I fished it out and it turned out to be fiberglass insulation like you'd use in building your house.

The question is, at this point - Is the water going to be safe to swim in, or should I pump it and refill it. I've already spent over $250 on the chemicals I've put in the pool and it will cost me another $500-$600 to refill the pool so we're looking at $750-$850 out the window, but I have 2 younger kids plus the neighborhood kids that want to swim here.

Do you think the filter (D.E. Filter) will clean the fiberglass out of the pool, or should I not even chance it?

Thanks for your help!
 
Just chiming in to say that I agree that your DE filter will get everything out.

I'd let it filter for a couple of days and then I'd vacuum it out really well. After that I'd break the filter down and clean and recharge it.
 
So after some more research (trying to figure out why my pool water is STILL cloudy after running the pump for 2 weeks x 24/7 straight, I find out that whomever owned the filter before me had converted it into a sand filter. I guess the filter I have is by some company that doesn't exist any more (Baker Hydro?).

Anyways, long story short - I think before I travel down the road of trying to get the sand converted D.E. filter hybrid of doom to work, I should probably just replace it with a good quality D.E. filter.

Our pool is approximately 35,000 gallons, our pipes are 1.5", which from what I can tell limits us to a 36 D.E. filter - now the question is, whose is better? Pentair? Hayward?

I know that I want to replace the pump with the Pentair Intelliflo series at some point (my electrical can't handle it right now, I'm going to have to make some new runs which I don't plan to do for at least another 4 months if not next year even).
 
The pipe size doesn't limit you to a certain size filter. In fact the 36 ft2 is small for the size pool you have. I'd go as large as you can afford. That way, when you redo the plumbing you'll be in good shape. I recommend the Pentairs but that's just because there are more dealers around here than Hayward dealers.
 
I read somewhere that you should size your filter to your pump and your pump to your pipe size. 1.5" pipes have a limit of around 45 GPM?

From what I understand, if your filter is too big for your pump/pipes you can't backwash properly and if your filter is too small you won't filter properly and could break the grids in the filter.

Now, I'm OBVIOUSLY not an expert on the subject, so is this not true?
 
I hope it's not! A lot of people around here are breaking the rules if it is. Me included. I have 1½" pipe and my pump is putting about 65gpm through it.

I suppose if you get a large enough filter you could have problems getting it to backwash properly, but that hasn't been a complaint and we have some people with fairly large filters and fairly small pumps. We also see people with 2 hp pumps on 1½" plumbing.
 
If the pump is large enough and the filter is small enough you can indeed break the grids, and this actually happens. On the other hand, while it is technically true that a very small pump and a very large filter will not allow you to backwash properly, this doesn't in fact come up because pool pumps don't get that small and residential filters don't get that big, so backwashing almost always works just fine.

There is no hard limit on how much water you can move through 1.5" pipes. The higher the GPM the less efficient your system is, but you can actually run very high GPM numbers through 1.5" pipe with a large, but still plausible, pump. Since pool builders are very prone to installing oversized pumps this situation is much more common than it ought to be.
 

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2nd what Bama said; 45 gpm might be a limit for 1.5 in pipe with gravity flow, but max is much higher than that with even moderate pressures.
The backwash issue might be true at industrial size, but it will clean out with flow; may take a little longer, but it will flush out (probably with the same amount of water, just spread over longer time!)
As far as to small a filter- definitely don't go small! even if you don't overpressurize and break it, you'll be cleaning it way to often!
Realistically, your filter should be sized to your pool (or oversized!), then your pump sized to your filter(but not oversized!!!!), then your piping sized for the water flow (or oversized as well!)
 
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