Problems After Through Wall Skimmer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[edavis]

To start off last year I had the original over the wall skimmer on my Intex 18 x 52 pool with my Intex sand filter/saltwater pump and my pool was always crystal clear using the pool school BBB method. This year I decided to make it better and install the Hydrotools wide mouth through wall skimmer and hard pipe. My old setup had a fine mesh bag for use during cleaning with my Hayward critter and the skimmer basket actually had smaller holes in the skimmer basket. The Hydrotools wide mouth skimmer basket had larger holes and I have been noticing I needed to backwash more often and that I was getting grass and other debri through the pump into the clear tee above my pump that has the copper bars which would block the screen and would require cleaning it out. I knew that was not good and so I tried the knee high trick in the skimmer but with little sucess for me because it just seemed to stretch over the top of strainer not set inside it and let it collect inside basket. So last night after fighting this issue and backwashing I decided to open up my sand fliter and find out that the screen inside of the sand filter for the valve assembly was packed full of grass and other debri which was causing less flow. I would of expected to see this on my pressure guage on my sand filter but did not. I cleaned everything real good last night and no pressure diffence still running in the green same PSI but now my pool is back to circulating very well. I went to Lowes after doing this and bought the 1 gal paint strainer bag and put that inside my skimmer basket so hopefully that will do the job. I hope this will help others with issues and I definetely would not run this skimmer without a debri bag filter of some kind to catch anything that is not pretty large in size.