Sorry but I am going to have to defend cartridge owners everywhere. I find a cartridge to be much lower maintenance then some of the others at least from some of the postings that I have read but the key is to oversize the filter such you don't have to clean it so often. I clean my filter twice a year and I never close the pool. Each cleaning takes about 45 minutes so overall, I bet I spend less time per year then many sand filter owners. Of course following the great advice about maintaining pools from this site has resulted in an algae free pool for the last 5 years so I have never had to fight that problem. But I do agree that could be a problem with a cartridge.