Cleaning DE Filter

We are slowly rehabbing a 20+ year old pool and it has the original DE filter and while it seems to work really well we were going to disassemble it and flush it when they drain the pool to redo the plaster. Any tips or recommendations?

I'm a complete rookie, but read the sticky on the top of this group of forums, it's quite informative.

It’s simple. You take it apart and spray it with a garden hose. If you have a brass hose nozzle to get a hard thin stream then use that. You want to get as much of the residual DE and debris off the grids or tubes depending on the type you have. There will be a lot of gunk up in corners too.

Also, inspect any metal parts inside the filter. Or anything look brown, rusty etc those parts need to be replaced. Look for cracked plastic also.

Thanks, they are coming out on Monday to drain the pool so I am looking forward to getting it apart and giving it a good rehab.

A local company came out and resurfaced out deck last week and it looks super, the kids/grandkids are going to love it.

I pull mine apart and clean the grids every year.

Well, it was disassembled, they are surprisingly simple but surprisingly difficult to reassemble...ha. The grids were a mess, totally compacted with old DE, it was an inch thick on several of the panels. They were cleaned and reloaded with DE but they were too far gone, had to order a new set of panels. They should be here tomorrow so I will let you know how it goes.

The new panels from Pleatco work great, loaded with about 8-10lbs of DE and replaced the air bleed/guage on top of the filter and it works like new. The pool water is sparkling clean.

(link to picture removed by mod to speed up process of getting post on forum. )

If you want to post a picture, send it to poolforum DOT pics AT gmail DOT com and reference the URL of this thread.