Report on use of Filter Balls

[Rpeterson39]

Moved from here.

IMO a waste of money and more of a gimmick. You’re first season will be great! BUT We’re on our 2nd summer season with the In the Swim filter balls. First year was great, even first month of this summer went well. My husband though, had been complaining that nothing ever comes out during backwash so we’ve been suspecting they’re clogged in the filter. Long story short... 2 weeks of rain and a week while I was on vacation my hubs forgot to add pucks and were up to our ears in terrible algae. Chemicals are all good now and shocking the heck out of the pool on round 2. The filter balls are simply not cleaning out the algae now and are likely all gummed up. From what I read you need to remove and wash them every season which we hadn’t done yet. After speaking with pool experts and testing cya, phosphates and all we can... it’s starting to look like the balls are NOT filtering anything anymore. I will likely remove and wash them to see what’s in them but my husband already wants to switch back to sand. Too bad stores seem out of sand now...

 

[Jimrahbe]

39,

All Magic but no darn Wabbit...

Sand will work much better long term..

Thanks,

Jim R.

 

[Rpeterson39]

We’ve since removed the filter balls and this picture is them in a wheelbarrow. The cleaner ones mind you are only gunk free because we sucked them out with a shop vac. Everything from the past season as we expected remained stuck during backwash and algae at this point was so badly gunked up in there- we felt we had no other choice but to replace with more effective long term media. We stopped into a pool store without telling them we already suspected the balls were no longer filtering... After having our chemicals tested by pool store and being told they were perfect- they then said it was looking like a filter issue! We replaced the balls with recycled glass after researching again- but finding no negatives. Hopefully we didn’t get sucked into another gimmick we didn’t know enough about... we had researched these filter balls also with (at that time) nonnegative reviews! I don’t think they’ve been out long enough for ppl to run into any troubles. If you are ok with removing them each every pool season (we live in CT with only 3 mos of pool use) or in hotter states every couple months- they do exceptional cleaning for a very brief time... to continue to use them they must be removed and washed. But who really wants to have to do that every couple months?!

 

[mknauss]

Sand --- the filter is called a Sand filter ...........

 

[Newdude]

I like how somebody put it recently (apologies I forget who to credit) :

The best you can say about any alternatives to sand is that they work as good as sand. They are either equal or worse, never better.

 

[Donldson]

I switched from a cartridge filter to a sand filter a couple of years ago. I was told years ago that this was a backwards move, that cartridges filter finer than sand. That's true, however my water is even clearer than before. Now how does that make any sense?

Because the chemistry is right. Water clarity is a chemistry issue first, filtration is a distant second. So with a regularly cleaned sand filter (I always slacked with the cartridge) and following the chemistry taught here the water has been great. There's no reason to use other filter media in a sand filter, they are just gimmicks used by pool stores to up sell to more. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all they do: convince people to spend more than they should on products and services. Even the free testing is not reliable and just to get someone in front of a salesperson. Pool stores are built on sales, not easy to manage clear pools...

As far as the filter balls, that's good you got them out. They are quite the gimmick. However, I'm very concerned at how green they are. Dead algae is white, like many of those are, but live algae is green. If you have green in your filter media then you have live algae in your pool. At best that's going to waste chlorine and cause more frequent need to backwash. At worst your water is one misstep away from a bloom. The SLAM Process might be worth looking in to, regardless of how perfect the salespeople (they are not experts, they are sales professionals) think your chemistry looks.

 

[Rpeterson39]

We slammed the pool for sure but the chlorine wasn’t enough.yes algae was everywhere at the time of old pic it was very alive since we’d just started the high chlorine process. Our CYA is also high. It’s now crystal clear but can’t swim until chlorine comes down. Thankfully here’s the update.

 

[mknauss]

What is your CYA and FC?
You can safely swim in a pool as long as the FC is above the minimum and at or below SLAM level based on your CYA. You must also be able to see the bottom of the pool in the deep end of the pool.

 

[YippeeSkippy]

Just wondering why you chose to go from one sand alternative to another? Some folks on TFP use glass, but many come here and say it isn't better and go back to sand. Did you research glass *here*?

Maddie

 

[Flying Tivo]

They are either equal or worse, never better.

Mmmmmmm, let me think about that for a few minutes, maybe not! I have been using Zeo for 2 years and i had to slam twice(mini), the Zeo cleared it in 24hrs, im almost certain sand would have taken longer. Let me state that Zeo has a learning curve for it to work properly.

 

[Rpeterson39]

What is your CYA and FC?
You can safely swim in a pool as long as the FC is above the minimum and at or below SLAM level based on your CYA. You must also be able to see the bottom of the pool in the deep end of the pool.

The CYA we just got back was high...112 the FC is over 20 but that’s as high as it will read so not too sure how much higher... it’s been crystal clear in the deep end also but FC doesn’t seem to be lowering below the high at 20 still... it’s been 4 days of heat and sun steady at over 20... it was 96 degrees the other day so we’d love to swim. Any thoughts?

 

[mknauss]

How are you testing your pool water chemistry?