As the pool season is on the horizon I figured I better pay some attention to my list of things to do before summer get here. I've got a sand filter with a multiport valve, all of which only has three pool seasons on them. Last year I noticed a constant supply of sand in the robotic pool cleaner filters, but nothing noticeable in the pool. There is not an external source of sand, so the filter is the only place it can be coming from. From other posts I've seen it doesn't seem that a bad spider gasket on the multiport valve can cause sand to get into the pool, is that correct? Most of the time it seems like the advice is a broken lateral, so you just pull all the sand out and replace them. I did see one mention of making sure there is a snug fit between the connections where the center pipe fits into the multiport valve and lateral assembly. If those junctions aren't snug, how does one go about snugging them up? And with the sand out, from what I've seen it doesn't seem like sand substitutes seem to be much better that sand. Is that the consensus? Thank you.
