Cloudy pump discharge

[ChrisB]

I think I know the answer but....
My discharge into the pool is cloudy when I am vacuuming up the remains of the scum and dead algae from the bottom of the pool. Does this mean the inards of the sand filter are broke or stopped up?

[Sean OBrien]

Not necessarily either.

Sand filters are only capable of filtering down to 20 microns or so on their own. A lot of particulate is actually finer than that - and some of it is just so soft that it won't make a difference if you are using sand or another medium. As was mentioned in another thread, the soft stuff gets pulverized even more if your pump is oversized for your filter (more power turns the sharp sandy into a blender).

A good place to start is to recycle your sand filter (backwash to clean out old gunk, rinse to settle any channeling that might have happened and back to filter to start things going again). If the dead algae and gunk is still getting through you can look at other filtering options (boosting the filter with DE and using filter bags on the skimmer) or you can do what I ended up having to do and switch the filter over to waste and just blow the vacuumed water down the drain. After a few hundred gallons out the waste tube, I seem to be having better luck dealing with the rest of it with the methods mentioned above.

[BigDave]

It means you have to open and inspect your filter.

[PoolDoc]

My discharge into the pool is cloudy when I am vacuuming up the remains of the scum and dead algae from the bottom of the pool.

Not broken or stopped up -- it usually means 1 of 2 things:
1. Most of your sand is missing, or
2. Your pump is too big for your filter.

Often it's both - having a an oversized pump will blow sand out of the filter on each backwash. This is a very common problem on AG pools. The short term solution is probably to open the filter and add sand. The longer term solution is to get a bigger filter OR to get a smaller pump OR to rework your existing pump with a new impeller so that it acts a smaller pump