Right. Intex 8600gal 24xblah blah. Its in the signature. Bear with me as I'm annoyed and ranting. 
Spring is here, and of course the oaks are dropping their pollen things everywhere. Those tiny brats are detaching from the stems, and entering the sand filter. All well so far.
Today I went to backwash and got almost zero flow. Flip back to rinse, and it blows dirty, then cleans up as expected. Back to backwash and the same deal happens. Nil flow. So I pull off the multiport and take a peek. (These are not my photos. Click the thumbnail.) What I saw was similar to this. Every narrow tiny slot was plugged with plant matter from the port side.
So I rinsed the holy poop out of it, and got it clean. I then looked into the sand filter itself, and saw an absolute buttload of those little pollen brats on the surface. I came to the conclusion that backwashing is bringing all that plant matter to the diffuser, but cannot cross back through to be washed from the sandbed, and is clogging the flow. I plugged the riser and rinsed with the hose, and got out as much as I could. Reassemble, and go to backwash. Works for a moment and boom! Nothing. Disassembly again and I find the same deal....a bunch of plant matter on top of the sand bed, with another mass in the diffuser.
So A bit of googling ensued. I find that the Hayward diffuser has larger holes. Looking at other brands, I see the same thing. So why does Intex have these crazy small slots? I mean, I understand its to keep sand from escaping, but thats only temporary and will eventually come to an equilibrium.
So my question is:
Can I safely enlarge some of the slots on the diffuser to match what I see in other brands? I'm pretty sure it will be perfectly fine and will solve my problem, but I wanted to ask some other older hands first.
Spring is here, and of course the oaks are dropping their pollen things everywhere. Those tiny brats are detaching from the stems, and entering the sand filter. All well so far.
Today I went to backwash and got almost zero flow. Flip back to rinse, and it blows dirty, then cleans up as expected. Back to backwash and the same deal happens. Nil flow. So I pull off the multiport and take a peek. (These are not my photos. Click the thumbnail.) What I saw was similar to this. Every narrow tiny slot was plugged with plant matter from the port side.
So I rinsed the holy poop out of it, and got it clean. I then looked into the sand filter itself, and saw an absolute buttload of those little pollen brats on the surface. I came to the conclusion that backwashing is bringing all that plant matter to the diffuser, but cannot cross back through to be washed from the sandbed, and is clogging the flow. I plugged the riser and rinsed with the hose, and got out as much as I could. Reassemble, and go to backwash. Works for a moment and boom! Nothing. Disassembly again and I find the same deal....a bunch of plant matter on top of the sand bed, with another mass in the diffuser.
So A bit of googling ensued. I find that the Hayward diffuser has larger holes. Looking at other brands, I see the same thing. So why does Intex have these crazy small slots? I mean, I understand its to keep sand from escaping, but thats only temporary and will eventually come to an equilibrium.
So my question is:
Can I safely enlarge some of the slots on the diffuser to match what I see in other brands? I'm pretty sure it will be perfectly fine and will solve my problem, but I wanted to ask some other older hands first.
