First post - and I have to start by saying what an awesome community this is! I opened my pool this year to find a swampy green mess (cover tore). Researching how to get rid of the algea led me here and I spent last weekend reading every page of pool school, and hundreds of posts. So far I have bought my first real test kit, emptied my local Costco store of bleach, discovered borax for the first time, and now have a blue pool that I can mostly see the bottom.
The pool became ours when we bought the house a few years ago. It is a doughboy 24' round above ground and came with a doughboy Power Pak II 1hp pump and a sequel II DE filter. The filter worked great last year until late season when 2 grids failed. Replacement was expensive and I frankly hate using DE (messy, constant backwashing, etc) but it sure did filter incredibly well. I picked up a used doughboy media master 1600 (150 lbs sand) filter for almost free to replace it.
Here is my problem and question - filtering was very slow with the sand filter although I didn't know what to expect having never had a sand filter before. Once the water was starting to clear I vacuumed for the first time and had a ton of debris coming out the return. I checked the sand and it looks fine. Before I put it in service I gave it a once over and everything appeared in good shape. I also replaced the spider gasket and head sealing gasket before putting it into service. I do not detect sand in the return, so I suspect it is a top end valve issue. Note that this style filter does not have laterals, but a slotted bottom drain piece that appears fine. Backwashing does show dirty water but not as much as I would expect. The fact that the tank has dirty water in it plus the pool slowly getting clearer shows it is filtering somewhat.
I searched the site and found 2 posts from prior years where people described the same issue with this filter, but neither thread offered a solution. So, am I on the right track thinking top-end? Is this common with this filter? Any specific things to look for?
I'm off to the pool to tear the top off and see if I can discover its issue.
The pool became ours when we bought the house a few years ago. It is a doughboy 24' round above ground and came with a doughboy Power Pak II 1hp pump and a sequel II DE filter. The filter worked great last year until late season when 2 grids failed. Replacement was expensive and I frankly hate using DE (messy, constant backwashing, etc) but it sure did filter incredibly well. I picked up a used doughboy media master 1600 (150 lbs sand) filter for almost free to replace it.
Here is my problem and question - filtering was very slow with the sand filter although I didn't know what to expect having never had a sand filter before. Once the water was starting to clear I vacuumed for the first time and had a ton of debris coming out the return. I checked the sand and it looks fine. Before I put it in service I gave it a once over and everything appeared in good shape. I also replaced the spider gasket and head sealing gasket before putting it into service. I do not detect sand in the return, so I suspect it is a top end valve issue. Note that this style filter does not have laterals, but a slotted bottom drain piece that appears fine. Backwashing does show dirty water but not as much as I would expect. The fact that the tank has dirty water in it plus the pool slowly getting clearer shows it is filtering somewhat.
I searched the site and found 2 posts from prior years where people described the same issue with this filter, but neither thread offered a solution. So, am I on the right track thinking top-end? Is this common with this filter? Any specific things to look for?
I'm off to the pool to tear the top off and see if I can discover its issue.