A year ago my pump went out and I replaced it with an A.O. Smith B130 2.4hp.

[PoolDoc]

Not sure any of that's relevant.

Still need to know which pump you have, to be sure, but it's very, very likely you are over-pressurizing the filter. If you are reaching 33+ pounds with dirty DE membranes, you've got a 25+ pressure differential across the membranes . . . and most DE grids won't support that kind of load. To put it another way, on a 2420, you have 24 sft of filter area across 7 full size and 1 short membrane grids or elements. Figure 3 sft each (1.5 on each side) and you are asking the grids to support 3 x 144 (sqin / sft) x 20 lbs/sqin OR 8600 lbs. That's roughly like asking a grid (if it was flat instead of curved) to support the weight of a loaded dump truck tire driving across it.

Not happening.

Sounds like whoever designed your water features may have been shooting from the hip, rather than actually designing the flows and hydraulics of your system. That works when it works, but when it doesn't, well, it sucks. That's one reason many builders put in multiple pumps -- it makes the design problem MUCH easier.

I'm pretty reluctant to give too much advice, because without a piping layout drawing, and full hydraulic data on each element (spa, fountain, "sheer decent" feature (not sure what that is) and pool) it's not really possible to actually calculate the relationships among the elements.*

But, I'm still safe in saying that a 2HP pump is WAY too big for a 24' DE filter. That's where you need to start; anything else is just tweaking around the edges of the problem.

Sorry,

Ben

* Just to be clear -- I'm not offering to redesign it. It's time consuming and still risky without on-site inspection.