DE powder in pool

[Yellowdog]

As a new user, and still restricted ;(. I find it very confusing. It turned me off the site until I went searching for pool advice again, and saw this thread. Oddly enough, I can't add info to the profile since THAT is retricted too.. I didn't see any requirement to include optional personal info at sign up, but I may have missed it. As a matter of course, I put as little personal information as I can for security purposes. Had I understood it was a requirement, I could have been active weeks ago. Oh well.

Can I ask a question? How do you get DE powder out of a pool? I inadvertently put a bunch in (a valve was set wrong) and it has made the pool cloudy. Some has precipitated out and I vacuumed it.. But the water is still cloudy. The pool is a salt, 60000 gallons, with a floor cleaner system (that is now clogged I think from the de powder). The ph, chlorine,alkalinity are all good and there is no algae - the pool is covered all the time except when in use. Any ideas? Or am I draining? Thanks....

[aylad]

Hi yellowdog,

This is one of the very, very few times that I would recommend use of a clarifier, if the filter isn't trapping it. A few years ago I replaced my sand filter, and when I filled it up with zeosand and started it up for the first time in 'filter" mode (a mistake I won't EVER make again!!) my pool did much the same as yours, and no amount of filtering was making a difference. Looked like a huge mud puddle in my back yard. I used a product by Natural Chemistry called Clear and Perfect, and the next day it was almost completely clear, and on the second morning it was again sparkling. Vac'd all the stuff to waste and chalked it up as a hard-earned lesson.

Janet

[waste]

Welcome to the Forum!

While I am loath to disagree with Janet, I believe that if you turn off the pump for ~ 12 hours, it will settle to the bottom and you can vacuum it into the filter (go VERY slowly with the vac, lest you stir the DE back into suspension!)

It will take a couple of days of doing this but, you won't need to buy a flocculent chem. If you need the pool clear for this weekend, use the floc to speed things up.

After it's all out, follow the directions in this (http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showthread.php?9189-cleaning-a-DE-filter) thread to properly get back to the correct level of DE in your filter.

[aylad]

I believe that if you turn off the pump for ~ 12 hours, it will settle to the bottom and you can vacuum it into the filter (go VERY slowly with the vac, lest you stir the DE back into suspension!)



Hopefully, Waste is right on and it will happen for you. But if you go on 2 weeks, like I did, with no visible effects, then that's one of the only times I would ever recommend the clarifier....:)

Janet