Intex Sand Filter and Pump

[DianeF1]

We started to open the pool due to the high temps - mid 80's on April Fools day!

I have a 16 X 52 Ultra Frame Pool with the Intext Sand Filter and Pump that came with the pool. I attempted to vacuum the pool and it's happening again (this is year two with the pool and I fought this last year). It's like the vacuum when attached taxes the pump - so instead of getting great suction within a few minutes of starting the pressure gauge on the filter goes into the yellow and the suction isn't strong enough to pull anything. The amount of air in the stainer basket is large.

We checked all the hoses - no drips and all are tight. I made sure that there was no air in the vacuum hose when I tried the manual vacuum. And when we switch over to the Hayward Bug (had to since the arm holding the strainer basket and such the vacuum hose snapped again!) it was worse. I got maybe 20 minutes before the bug stopped moving and there was next to no water going back into the pool. I know my first vacuum I'm going to have to backwash and backwash since I'm pulling a lot of dirt from the bottom (live on dirt road so it's "life" at our house). But this is ridiculous.

Is it the pump? Bad connections?

I don't want to spend another year babying the vacuum.

Diane

 

[George N]

What size sand filter is it? The 1600 is way underpowered for that size pool.

 

[Big_kid]

We had an Intex followed by an Intex knockoff, and both pumps were WAY underpowered. Moving up to a sand filter was the best thing we did, no filtration/vacuuming problems since.

 

[DianeF1]

It's the Intex 2100 GPH .95 HP Sand Filter Pump with GFCI.

 

[rmduff]

I have the same pool and pump and had the same problem when I tried to vacuum for the first time. I replaced the inlet plunger valve and it solved my problem. The old plunger value was 2 years old and I guess the seals were starting to go bad. So check the plunger valve and see if that fixes the problem.

 

[DianeF1]

Changes since I last posted....

-we backwashed the filter after each vacuum session or any session where it sent the pump into the yellow zone and stopped working
-I got 5 additional hoses for my aquabug installed
-added a leaf catcher to the aquabug
-Had my husband re-check all the aquabug hoses and external hose attachments

It had troubles for a few more days (our cover fell in the pool so we had a lot of leaves and dirt in the bottom to be cleaned out). Last night - started with a backwash and then it ran like a champ for 3 hours trouble free!

I bet we had an air leak compounded with a dirty filter issue. Hoping this weekend to complete the mess cleanup and start balancing the water again.