🆘Help I think my pump exploded!

[teener629]

Having a pool emergency, 4 month old pool/equipment.
Pump just turned on and was so loud my husband went out and there was water spewing from the top of the filter housing and from at least one other pipe in the pump area. When he attempted to release the pressure by opening the valve, it broke off and shot up.

What in the serious heck just happened?? What would even cause this? Is my pump or filter ruined? Sadly I hadn’t looked at my pressure gauge in awhile but it hadn’t budged last time I did look at it.

15k gallon salt gunite
DE filter
VSP (will look up model etc)
Our pool was filled in April so we haven’t been due to clean our filter yet bc we’re told twice a year.
Solar heater did cause some changes in system pressure back in April but we took the waterfall out of the main pool pump setting and that seemed to have fixed it.

The only 3 things I had noticed:
1. This might not even be relevant but a couple of days ago I tried turning on my waterfall and the pump kept turning on and turning off for like 30 minutes, so the waterfall would turn off for a few seconds/minutes and then sputter back on by itself until it finally stayed on. I tried messing with the pump speed to see is that would help but honestly it didn’t really seem to do anything at all. I wasnt too worried bc I thought it was some janky setting my solar heater guy set when he came to address the pressure issue mentioned above. I hadn’t even tried to turn the waterfall back on since then because I prefer the spillover to the waterfall so i didn’t know what what’s going on with the waterfall but I thought it was his doing.
2. The other thing is when they first filled the pool it took a month before they realized nobody put DE in my filter. Not sure if that would’ve done anything to the filter but my pb guarantee me it was not going to be a problem.
3.. we did seem to have a lot lot of water evaporating this week but it did also finally become 100° in Austin that’s what I attributed it to but looking back it was only like two days in between filling it and it was already down like 3-4 inches.

Feel like I’m going to puke.
Before pics of the equipment

 

[TinFoilHat]

After pics would be helpful.

 

[ajw22]

Lots of mistakes made.

The filter PSI gauge tells you when you filter needs cleaning. Anytime the PSI is 25% over clean pressure the filter should be backwashed. That could be in one day or many weeks. Filter PSI should be checked at least every week, if not more often.

Grids run without DE can be ruined. The builder should have bought you new grids.

DE Filter Use and Care - Further Reading

www.troublefreepool.com

The pressure relief valve on the filter may have been damaged during construction causing it to break.

Did your husband try and release the pressure by opening the valve with the pump running? He should have turned the pump off first.

You have an Intelliflo3 pump.

Have the builder repair everything under warranty.

 

[Mdragger88]

Sorry you’re having these issues. Try not to panic.
As AJ said contact your builder for warranty repairs and leave the pump off.
*In the meantime until things are back up & running be sure to keep your fc up each day in both pool & spa using liquid chlorine so you don’t get a swamp too on top of all this.
FC/CYA Levels
Pour it slowly (pencil size stream) away from the pool wall while brushing so it doesn’t pool on the bottom and gets mixed in.
If you have a robotic cleaner that operates separately from the equipment run it daily.
Otherwise brush.