Here's the background: Most of this year it seemed like my sand filter wasn't working as well as it had in the past. It kinda seemed like sand was making its way into the pool. I have no sand around my house at all so I suspected that it might be the filter. Then, around the 4th of July I had a pretty bad algae problem. I SLAMed for about 10 days and got it under control. At the tail end of the SLAM I added some DE to my sand filter, only it was non-pool DE. I realized my mistake pretty quickly and on advice from the board, I backwashed and rinsed the filter, and then did a deep clean with a hose. The deep clean was about 20 minutes, and the water ran clear. I also got a 1 micron filter that fits around the skimmer basket, in hopes that this would help get rid of any rogue food grade DE in my pool, and maybe help get rid of some of the last remains of algae. I also noticed that backwash hose was filling up when my pool was on filter, so I went ahead and changed the spider gasket. That seems to have worked.
So I've noticed a couple of things that makes me think my filter isn't working correctly: 1) We had a bad storm that put a lot of debris into the pool 2 days ago. When I vacuumed it out yesterday, water from the return looked dirty. It made my pool get a bit cloudy right after. 2) The PSI has been at 10 consistently for about 3 weeks, with no backwash. I did a backwash yesterday after I noticed the dirty water coming from the return. The backwash was pretty gross and it took longer than usual to run clear. 3) I added 3/4 of a cup DE (Pool grade this time) and the pressure raised to about 11.5, and stayed there when I rechecked about an hour later. The next day the pressure is back to 10. 4) still getting some sand in the pool. I'm nervous that it's still dead algae but my CC is 0, overnight FC loss is 0, and its gritty.
The pressure gauge isn't obviously broken, as the dial moves around about as expected when it's started, stopped, or loses prime, but I'm ordering a new one anyways. I put a sock around the return this morning to see if it catches anything.
Is there anything else I should be doing to figure out what's going on? Could it just be that the filter was overloaded (and I didn't know it due to a faulty pressure gauge) which caused the dirty water to not get cleaned when I vacuumed?
So I've noticed a couple of things that makes me think my filter isn't working correctly: 1) We had a bad storm that put a lot of debris into the pool 2 days ago. When I vacuumed it out yesterday, water from the return looked dirty. It made my pool get a bit cloudy right after. 2) The PSI has been at 10 consistently for about 3 weeks, with no backwash. I did a backwash yesterday after I noticed the dirty water coming from the return. The backwash was pretty gross and it took longer than usual to run clear. 3) I added 3/4 of a cup DE (Pool grade this time) and the pressure raised to about 11.5, and stayed there when I rechecked about an hour later. The next day the pressure is back to 10. 4) still getting some sand in the pool. I'm nervous that it's still dead algae but my CC is 0, overnight FC loss is 0, and its gritty.
The pressure gauge isn't obviously broken, as the dial moves around about as expected when it's started, stopped, or loses prime, but I'm ordering a new one anyways. I put a sock around the return this morning to see if it catches anything.
Is there anything else I should be doing to figure out what's going on? Could it just be that the filter was overloaded (and I didn't know it due to a faulty pressure gauge) which caused the dirty water to not get cleaned when I vacuumed?
