Is filter pressure related to the heater?

[davmar77]

our heater is on the way out but a replacement is not in this year's budget. the unit is probably 15 years old with a metal housing and it appears some critters have gotten in there off season and love to chew on the wires. we had service done and were told that it would be quite expensive for rewiring and of course it's not worth it for such an old unit. the in ground pool is 20 x 40 and i know a new hayward heater is about 1500.00 plus installation. it's the way to go but not now. when the heater service guy left he said that we needed to backwash when the pressure got to about 30 which i knew already. with the heater on it's last legs, is the pressure related? it seems we are reaching higher pressure more often than in previous years and i'm having to backwash to relieve the pressure too often.
thanks in advance,
dave

 

[Richard320]

A clogged up heater will make all the pressures higher, from freshly clean all the way to backflush time.

The only way it could make the interval shorter is if it was shedding chunks of corroded material, but you'd see them in the pool.

Do you, by chance, have a DE filter? They never backwash 100%, which is why the recharge is 80% of a fresh fill. You could be just building up and building up a crust on the screens. The cure for that is to disassemble and manually clean them. Possibly even soak them overnight.

This is my filter last year, after backwashing 4 minutes - twice what the manual says. And my pool was never a swamp.

 

[JasonLion]

The heater will add a little back pressure to the system, but it doesn't normally get any worse as the heater gets older. As Richard320 suggested, problems with the filter not getting completely clean are more likely to cause the symptoms you describe.

 

[davmar77]

interesting. i was wondering only because this was mentioned by the heater service guy.