This year I grossly underestimated the amount of water I had to pump out during the Spring. When I pulled back the cover I had a green swamp. Really bad, on par with what I've seen it foreclosed houses.
After I converted the green swamp into a blue Oasis, I backwashed the filter. And since I had a little time to kill I decided to rinse my sand 500#, 27k gallons). When the water began to clear I saw a lot of what looked like gold nuggets one might find when panning for gold. They were about the size and thickness of a nickel. I picked one up and mushed it and it was a chunk of pure pollen. And they were too solid, and too large to pass the screen during a backwash.
From there I spent a couple of hours with a kids sand sifter separating them from the sand, rerinsing the sand, separating some more. When I was finished I had about a half a gallon of golden nuggets.
My point: if you live in the south (I'm in Atlanta) where skiing on pollen drifts in the spring is a part of your life, make sure your filter hasn't collected a couple of pounds of pollen that it can't get rid of.
After I converted the green swamp into a blue Oasis, I backwashed the filter. And since I had a little time to kill I decided to rinse my sand 500#, 27k gallons). When the water began to clear I saw a lot of what looked like gold nuggets one might find when panning for gold. They were about the size and thickness of a nickel. I picked one up and mushed it and it was a chunk of pure pollen. And they were too solid, and too large to pass the screen during a backwash.
From there I spent a couple of hours with a kids sand sifter separating them from the sand, rerinsing the sand, separating some more. When I was finished I had about a half a gallon of golden nuggets.
My point: if you live in the south (I'm in Atlanta) where skiing on pollen drifts in the spring is a part of your life, make sure your filter hasn't collected a couple of pounds of pollen that it can't get rid of.
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