General filter/skimmer questions for a wooded backyard pool

[awetzel]

Hello!

As a new pool owner, I am really struggling with keeping our pool clean. We have a 18x35ft in-ground pool with a Pentair DE filter and our backyard borders a wooded creek. We have a ton of trees that are constantly dropping leaves into the pool. I feel like I skim and vacuum constantly. I understand this is part of having a pool around a lot of trees, but I feel like our pool skimmer does nothing. I run the filter at least 8 hours a day and sometimes when I empty the skimmer basket there is nothing in it despite there being tons of stuff floating in the pool. The perfect example was today. I came out to what felt like thousands of flies in my pool. I have no clue where they came from, but it felt like a swarm crashed landed. The filter had been running for hours, but when I went to empty the skimmer basket, there were none in there. Is it unreasonable to assume the skimmer should be catching things like that? What are some tricks/tips I can try to get some help with this? It's super aggravating to hand skim the pool so many times a day because it is impossible to keep up.

Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[jblizzle]

Do you have a floor drain? Is too much suction going to the floor instead of the skimmer?
Do you have a weir on the skimmer? It is really required to make the skimmer work properly.

 

[awetzel]

Do you have a floor drain? Is too much suction going to the floor instead of the skimmer?
Do you have a weir on the skimmer? It is really required to make the skimmer work properly.

I do have a floor drain. I have no clue how to measure how much suction is going to it compared with my skimmer. I do think that my water line is too high which may be causing my skimmer to not function properly, but I need to backwash as well so that will hopefully take the water line down a bit. I do have a weird (had to Google what that was) but I'm not sure how to tell if it is functioning properly. It moves back and forth as water enters.

 

[jblizzle]

As long as the weir is floating just under the surface it should be working to force the flow into the skimmer to be at the water level. Do you have two pipes that merge into valves in front of the pump? Do you have two holes under your skimmer basket that are open or just one?