Amy here...
New to the forum (and pools) but have been lurking for about two months now reading suggestions (i.e. - Intex Pool Recipe thread, which I can't link to now for some reason). Decided today that we need to get down to business and come up with a long term solution rather than time-consuming/costly chemical fixes for this pool.

Two months ago we bought and assembled an 18' round Intex metal frame pool. It was all fine and dandy, even when we came back from a two week vacation (following instructions in the Recipe thread to a T). Unfortunately on the way back from our second road trip and Vegas wedding (woohoo!), we were in a rollover accident on the interstate (not cool) and couldn't do much for maintenance for a few days. Everything seemed okay until it rained...a tiny bloom turned into something resembling a radioactive cesspool overnight. I panicked. I shocked the pool every other day (4 times the normal dose) for a week. After killing everything in sight we were left with a greenish-brown soupy mess. Still unable to see the bottom, I bought a new vac which seemed to get air in the filter line every 30 seconds so it was no better help than a broom. It was then that I dosed the pool with Kemtek's Phosphate Remover, as a hobby aquarist I knew that rainfall and our local water sources were full of the mess that will make managing a saltwater aquarium a green and red-slime nightmare. No matter what we did to try to deal with the aftermath, nothing seemed to work... then I remembered Leslie's carrying a water clarifier. After the first dose we saw some remarkable results but it still wasn't doing the job. I tried fruitlessly vacuuming the pool again the next day. That was when we realized that the Intex cartridge media wasn't filtering anything through, as we watched it spew out through our return. We went over to our local Family Leisure store and grabbed a Pleatco cartridge. The next day I noticed no action with the Intex over-wall skimmer. I checked the intake grid as I do now at least once a day (it never fails --- something will always be there), cleaned it up with the Intex waterhose vac but still, no dice. I popped the top on the filter and the new Pleatco was completely covered with brown and green slime on the surface. I tried washing it, soaking it in bleach... but it was a lost cause. I recycled my other 6 Intex filters through the system. On the plus side, I could see the bottom of my pool for a few days until it rained again.

Now we're back to square one.

Yesterday evening we went outside and found that the valve from the intake is now slightly leaking on the outside of the pool between the poolside and the cutoff (the dark grey nut). I suspect that this is from having to remove the blue cap and hose from the skimmer to unclog the intake every day. With the pump on, the leak isn't visible but a significant amount of free air is entering the system which the nut on the top of the Intex pump can't seem to relieve.

My husband and I are frustrated, to say the least. We don't have a Taylor kit but we have been driving over to Leslie's to have it checked. After I dose for phosphates, the chemistry couldn't be more perfect. Without the intake leak, it just seems like we are constantly fighting two things: Phosphates and detritus. We would cover our pool every time it rained, but if you live in Oklahoma, you have a good understanding of the predictability of our weather here.

By the way, this is my husband's first season in America. He's from Scotland and wants to spend 90% of his time outdoors now. That being said... we need this pool to work.

We've pretty much decided to lay all of the environmental blame on the pump for now (it certainly feels better that way) so we can justify shelling out the cash for a new filter system.
What I'd like to know though...

A.) Has anyone in similar climate situations successfully run the standard 1500 gph Intex system and gotten away with it for a season?

B.) Am I kidding myself with this filter thing? Or should I rush out to stockpile on more Pleatco ones and be done? (I don't like something that people say will "last me for the season" but won't last one rainy cleanup job...at that rate in this climate between filters and unnecessary chemicals I could bankrupt myself.)

C.) Will I still have the problem with that leaky valve if we replace the pump?

D.) I think I want something that will filter the whole pool in under 2 hours. The 18'x48" should be somewhere in the vicinity of 5500 gallons. Since I'm used to aquariums and not pools...the ridiculous part of me wants to shove a 10000 gph filter on there. What's recommended?

Just as an aside--- I did find that adding my shock in the evenings and running the filter all night did make a difference. But on the flip side of that... my electricity bill is up 120% and I'm not sure if this is the culprit.


Amy

PS - I don't think I'll ever have time for an aquarium hobby again after this.