I just bought a house with an above ground pool. About 16ft. It hasn't been open in a couple years. I bought a new pump and new sand. I cleaned out the filter. Added half water. Added a little sand. Placed the thing in there with the arms that fold down, then 3 maybe 4 bags of sand. Backwashed for two minutes and then rinsed for 1 minute. Pump seems to work fine, but it loses pressure within about a half hour. The jet has great pressure then starts to die out. I just found out that this is wrong BUT what I would do to get the pressure back is to backwash it again until the seeing glass on the side was clear water again then I would run filter normal again. Same thing happens. About 15-30 minutes its dead again. Not much water coming out. Now I thought maybe it was just because the water is so dirty and this was normal but I found out that is not the case and I should not have to backwash every 15 minutes. Do I have too much sand in there? Not enough sand? Why is the pressure so bad after a while? I tried hooking my vacuum hose up also to clean the bottom. Now its very dirty down there. But after a few passes, I see brown water shoot out of the jet. So of course I backwash again. What should I do here?
Help with filter pressure
- Thread starter coreyblake
- Start date
Hi, welcome to TFP! How much did you fill the filter? At most it should be only 3/4 full of sand. How large is the filter? If the filter is small and the water is very dirty it will clog quickly.
Thanks for the reply. Im not exactly sure of the physical size. All labels and things are worn off. If I had to guess.....maybe 15 to 20 gallon? Im just judging by a 5 galllon bucket. Its maybe 4x bigger. The water is very dirty. So maybe its just clogging? Should I run rinse cycle instead of backwashing so often?
If you are vacuuming sediment off the bottom, frequent backwashing is pretty common based on my experience. Do you have a vacuum to waste option on your pump?
When I was dealing with some hellacious green pool clean-up (Pre-TFP), it wasn't uncommon that I had to backwash the pool MULTIPLE times in a single vacuum session just to keep the pressure from building too much.
When I was dealing with some hellacious green pool clean-up (Pre-TFP), it wasn't uncommon that I had to backwash the pool MULTIPLE times in a single vacuum session just to keep the pressure from building too much.
If the pool has a lot of algae and debris on the bottom you may be better off vacuuming to waste and replacing water as you go. You could also try slamming the pool with the filter on recirculate until the water is a light gray, then vacuum to waste. Have you scooped up any leaves that may be on the bottom of the pool?
The TFP community is extensive. If you post a pic of your filter, there's a very good chance someone can identify it. Once we know what it is, we can look for manuals and specs to ensure you have an appropriate amount of sand and set reasonable expectations.