When I check out the skimmer basket, while I'm there I usually open the bleeder valve on the filter to bleed out any air. The pump is usually running when I open the bleeder valve. Every day I was finding that there was always air being bled out of the filter.

Normally I wouldn't care but once in a while I found the skimmer basket upside down in the skimmer. This is the problem I would like to avoid - finding the basket upside down in the skimmer. What I guessed was happening is that when the pump turned off, an air bubble from the filter would come back up through the skimmer and because I have a scum sock on the basket, the air bubble would push the basket up and out of position which would cause it to flip over.

Since the original post, I have purchased and installed a solar heater. I find that when I have water flowing through the solar heater, I do not get air in the filter. Every time I open the bleeder valve with the heater on, water comes out immediately. When I have the heater valve in bypass mode, I do get air in the filter.

The pump/filter is an AquaTools (Sta-Rite) 150 sf cartridge filter and 1.5 HP pump which is sold as a matched set. I found in the manual that they recommend bleeding the air out every time the filter is turned off and back on but since I do this twice a day I'm not going to be able to do that every time.

I applied silicone to the pump basket o-ring to make sure no air was getting in through there. I do not see any air in the pump basket chamber.

While we're talking air I also have an issue with air when using an Aquabug but I'll start a separate thread for that.

Thanks

Peter