Have to replace. Sand vs. Cartridge

[capricatunes]

My Hayward S200 sand filter is dead (Big crack). I've read a lot of forum posts and watched some videos, but just wanting to double check with my specific info in mind:

1. I live in Minnesota. We're open, at most, 5 months.
2. There is a lot of pollen, significant cottonwood cotton.
3. Lots of leaves but only in the fall, obviously.
4. Our tap water is good quality, so balancing when refilling/adding isn't terrible.
5. The S200 did a good job of keeping the water clear most days. It struggled a bit with the finer particles or on days with lots of sunscreened kids in the pool.
6. I use skimmer socks.
7. Backwashing goes into my neighbor's yard. So, I bought an extension hose. However, it's a pain in the butt to use. I really dislike backwashing.
8. I found the multiport valve to be in need of repair somewhat regularly. However, it was also an old part.
9. With the skimmer socks, backwashing was every ~2 weeks on average. Worse during cotton season.
10. I'm interested in saving as much water and energy as possible for environmental reasons.

The PB gave me quotes for another S200 or a Pentair 420, with the latter being a bit more expensive. My PB also said cleaning the cartridges takes a "really long time" to do properly, but that doesn't seem to match what I've read on TFP.

My goals are to do as little maintenance throughout the summer as possible. I don't think I would mind cleaning the cartridges 1x year...but I don't know...
I'm concerned with the cartridge replacement costs. PB said $400 - $500 / 5 - 7 years.

Thanks much for any advice!

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Cartridges are about $100 a pop and there are four of them inside the Pentair CC420. If you properly clean and maintain your filter and follow good TFP practices, those cartridges can last 10 years. What your PB is telling isn't wrong, it's just based on the fact that most of his customers don't maintain their own pools and so the filter gets beaten up pretty bad from service companies dumping all kinds of magic potions in the pool.

There are hose end products called "filter flossers" that create a series of directed streams of water that make it a lot easier getting in between the tight pleats of the filter cartridge and it makes cleaning a lot faster. Some people opt to get two sets of cartridges so they can do the swap quickly and then let the dirty cartridges soak to get them extra clean. It costs more up front but it's a nice peace of mind knowing you have spares on hand in case anything catastrophic happens. Wet cartridges are HEAVY though and the C&C filters tend to be pretty tall so the lifting requirements can be a bit of a challenge for a single individual. If you can get an extra set of hands to help, that just makes the job go twice as fast.

No backwashing is nice but the cleaning frequency of a cart will depend heavily on your seasonal pollen loads. You may find that you need to do 2 cleans per year to keep it in tip top shape but you won't know that until you try.

If energy savings is on your mind, get rid of that single speed pump and get a Pentair or Hayward variable speed pump. PB's tend to talk them down quite a bit but they can be a huge money saver if you use them wisely and it will save some lifespan on your filter cartridges if you can operate the pump at a lower speed for most of the day - lower RPM's means less pressure on the system and a lot less energy used. Many members around here run their VSP's 24/7 with most of that time spent running the pump at nearly 1000RPM (single speed pumps run at 3450RPM) ... the pump costs them pennies per day to run.

I have a Pentair DE filter which works amazingly well but, when the day comes for me to replace it, I will be replacing it with a Clean and Clear cartridge filter. The Pentair QuadDE I have is almost the exact same filter as the C&C with just some minor internal differences. So I'm already used to doing most of the cleaning job and will be happy to ditch the DE when the time comes.

 

[capricatunes]

Thanks much for the response.

I will be switching to a variable speed pump, and I'm excited about that.

I am a bit worried about our cottonwood issues. The skimmer socks catch quite a bit of it, but not all...I wonder if that would be a problem.

Thanks again.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

If you are using skimmer socks (I suggest you buy cheap polypropylene hair nets off of Amazon ... way cheaper than skimmer socks and work just as well if not better), then you are capturing like 99% of the major solid debris before it ever hits the filter. I think either filter will work fine in that case. If you weren't capturing the debris and just letting the filter handle it, then I think your cleaning job on the cartridge filter would be worse. I use hair nets in my skimmer basket and I can say that my filter rarely ever has any solid debris in it when I clean it out. All I see is that the DE goes from being off white when initially added to dirty-grey when I clean out the filter. So that means my filter is mainly handling fine silt and sand rather than leaf and bug debris.