Simple answer...TOO often. My cycles are averaging 5-10 days of late. If you're referring to chemical cleaning, I do it every few weeks - bought a 2nd set of grids the other year so I could always have a clean one on hand without having to take the pool out of service.
No sewer here in the countryside! Whatever comes out of the backwash hose or off the grids from the hose winds up in the ground. Yesterday I really went to town on it though and excavated a small quarry about 4 inches deep right where I usually set the grids to hose them off - a mixture of spent DE, ground, and grass resulted. Carted all of it over to the woods across the street from my house. That stuff was HEAVY! Had to do it via partial wheelbarrow loads.
The pool decides it...not me. I've been experiencing short filter cycles the past few seasons. Often 9-10 days from start to when it's time to dump the DE. Starting psi often around 14 and then doesn't take long till it's up to 20-22. At that point, I get a "no flow" indicator on the heater and then...no choice but to clean it all out again. PITA for sure. This is all tied in with my consideration of converting back to chlorine. Long story....
I must have had a few hundred pounds of the stuff. Like I said...all mixed in with ground. Even heavier than usual due to all the rain we've been having. At least there was no powder but still wore a mask when digging and transporting it.
Being a plant buff, I wouldn't do it. Certain of these baqua compounds have ammonia so no way would I put it in my plant pots. If you have chlorinated pool water with little else added to it, probably wouldn't cause any harm. But I'm using hydrogen peroxide, algicide, this stuff called "ahhsome" (no idea what's in it), non-chorine shock, and biguanide sanitizer.
I know, but, the alternative was to take the pool out of service while the grids are soaking in the filter cleaner solution. My original set of grids I got rid of several years ago already. I just figured having an extra set made sense. I get a longer filter cycle when a clean set of grids are in.
Becoming less fun as time goes on. I started with chlorine, switched due to a chlorine lock situation I ran into (another long story), then started using soft swim / baquacil - and have been on that now for over 20 years. It works...and yet sort of doesn't. Kind of complicated. If you check out the baquacil part of the forum, you'll find lots of stuff pertinent to my dilemma. I'm, shall we say, kind of well-known amongst certain members here - much to their chagrin
