Recovering backwash water

[jgold723]

Water is expensive here (and soon to be more expensive according to our water company). I'd like to find a way to capture the water I use to backwash/rinse my sand filter and reintroduce it to the pool. Afterall, it's already treated.

Has anyone here ever done this?

I'm thinking of some kind of settling tank from which I could pump the water back into the pool?

 

[Donldson]

Forced to ask: why not just switch to a cartridge filter instead?

 

[jgold723]

Cost, presumably. I don't know what size cartridge filter I'd need to replace my Hayward S200, but it looks like at least $1,000. That's a lot of backwashing. But maybe I'm wrong on the sizing -- I see a huge range of cartridge filters and I'm not certain what would suitable for my setup.

 

[Zombenstein]

Interesting proposal, but I totally understand. x)

Anyway, if a cartridge is too expensive, then yeah; that would be my first experiment - to capture it into a tank and filter it yourself, using the trusty gravel-sand-charcoal method. All that stuff is fairly cheap, just gotta know your science and whatnot

Out of curiosity, though .. How often are you needing to backwash?

 

[pookiesunshine]

so far this year i am dumping rainfall. i backwashed once or twice even though i didnt need to since i was going to waste the water anyway. I think last year I "had" to backwash maybe twice. If you frequently backwash, try using hairnets in your skimmer. that really cut down my b/w needs, as the hairnets collect a lot of finer material that would get through the skimmer and be trapped in the sand filter.

 

[jgold723]

Normally I don't have to backwash often, but right now the pine trees are dumping pollen by the bucketful and that quickly clogs the filter. I have to backwash at least a couple of times a week during this period.

I will try a sock in the skimmer basket -- thanks.

 

[cj133]

In 4 years I've only added water to the pool after opening one time. Obviously this depends on where you are, the amount of rain you get etc. It also depends on the size of the filter which is one of the reasons to buy the largest filter (not pump) you can. It looks like your filter is only 200 pounds on a 20,000 gallon pool. That's a whole lot of pool on a very small filter. I'm running 250lbs on a 9000 gallon pool.

However, if I was concerned about the cost of dumping water to wash the filter I believe switching to a cartridge filter would be the only answer. This is the main reason cartridge filters exist, for those who do not want to backwash for whatever the reasons are. I have no idea what the break even point would be for you after investing in another filter, sand etc. I have a feeling it won't be practical though.

Maybe you can dump the water into a holding tank and wait for the things you backwashed out to fall to the bottom? I'm not sure how that works with smaller things, if they would ever fall etc.