Dirt passing through filter

[Johnmike0985]

Hello friends, I am comming home to a dirty pool most days, just finer debris sitting at the bottom of the pool. I thought I may be the robotic pool cleaner blowing dirt out the top. But I have been running the cleaner in the evening for its 3 hr cycle and waking up to a fairly clean pool. When I return home from work the pool is a bit dirty. I run the pump at 3000 rpm for 8hrs during the day, 2000 for 8, and 1400 over night. I have come to believe the problem is something with my filter, Hayward cartridge system. Since I replaced my cartridge filter my psi at 3000rpm is about 9psi. I’m in pollen season in south texas so I typically have trouble keeping the psi under 20. I opened the cartridge to check the filter and found debris all over the place. Not typical. I attached the photo. I thought maybe suction side leak but I have no air I can see coming out the return jets and have a fully primed pump. Any help would be great.

—John

 

[willygee]

I have a similar filter. When clean @ 3450rpm 10 psi. @ 1725rpm 2 psi. Dirty 3450rpm 18psi. Your cartridge doesn't look like it is sealing properly from seeing the debris on top. New filter compare to old filter size wise?

 

[Johnmike0985]

I’m pretty sure, I replaced the dirty one with one from Amazon, thought that was the issue so I picked up a Hayward from my local pool supply. I’ll confirm tho. Where would it not seal, at the bottom? I feel like it sitting in their properly .

 

[Texas Splash]

I have the same filter for my ~18K pool. Yours is definitely overloaded in that pic and needs cleaning. I'm sure that's why you are seeing some blow-by. Some things I would consider:
1 - No need to run your pump at such high rpms. A soft 1,200 or so should be plenty to encourage surface debris to find its way to the skimmer. Kick-up the rpms once a day for a short time (15 - 20 min) to purge any trapped air in the pump pot, but you don't need it on high long.
2 - Watch the filter psi. On low speed my gauge barely moves, but on high it's dirty at about 9-10 psi and requires cleaning.
3 - Your signature is blank, so be sure to include all of your pool and equipment info. See mine as an example.
4 - It would be helpful to list your location in your profile. I'm in the S.A. area, so I can relate to many of the things blooming in our area this time of year.
5 - Are you using a skimmer sock? That's a MUST to catch surface debris to save stress on the filter.

 

[Johnmike0985]

That’s about 2 days worth! I’m heavily tree’s around here, so the last three weeks have been war. I blew off my roof today and should be about done with this spring mess. What was strange about that pic is the debris is mostly in the upper third of the filter. Cleaned it again today and it was similar but not to that extent. I can’t recall a time prior it being that way. I’m not getting any large debris, mostly fine. Now I did put in the variable speed pump a couple years ago. This may be my first new filter cartridge, I can’t recall. So perhaps the speed and the new filter combo is the issue.
1. I’ll get on the filter sock.
2. I was trained on a single speed whisper flow that kept psi at 10 on a clean filter and 20 on a dirty so perhaps I need recalibrate my thinking.
3. 1200 rpm? Really! Why am I so off on this? Are you running this speed 24/7 except for the 20min on high?