ok, Im crazy because I WAS turning the power off when switching between rinse, backwash & filter. I was just doing it without thinkin I guess so didnt even realize it. THis time I went to backwash first, ran for about 80sec on high. You were right the water got dirty after 30sec, then sand come out for 30 sec, then it went back to clear. Then I did rinse for 30 or 40 sec, then back to filter. I left the filter on low, gonna check it after 6 hrs and see if thats the end of the "clogging" problem. Its showing around 5lbs of pressure, but I never remembered to look at the pressure when it would act clogged, so no idea if it was rising or not.
I was not rinsing after backwashing, nor backwashing long enough, so hopefully that was the problem: I had never cleaned all that dead algae out and wasnt resettling the sand properly. We wil see..... hopefully thats all it was......So ready to be done with filtering/pump problems after 2 yrs of misery!
Next I need to find that leak, we keep wastin so much water because now that the rains have stopped, we have to keep adding water every few days to keep it above the skimmer and return. SO many times I forget the water hose is on or it flips out of pool and runs on ground for a while before I remember I left it on! Yikes, I hate waste! When I start concentrating on the leak, should I start another thread?