Quote Originally Posted by Bleach=Chlorine?
Search 'bump' on the forum and you will see a lot of DE filter users will just backwash at this point since the bump does little than re-adjust the crapola in the filter. Is it just me or is my DE filter amazingly easy to open, clean, close, etc? It is a three yr old Hayward DE Pro Grid.
Mine, like many others, is ~20 years old and has 15 individual bolts (the number gets indelibly stamped in your brain every time you have to attack them) to remove in order to open up the filter. It's a real pain, and amazingly difficult, even if you are holding one end of the bolt with a nutdriver and turning the other end with a ratchet driver. I can't do it in less than 10 or 15 minutes - and that's working hard and fast.

However, ever since I got running my pool down to a science, and I have not had any algae in over a year, I rarely need to do it. BTW, bumping is ok and good for the environment, because it saves water and DE. It's ok to have that gunk still in your filter -- so long as your chlorine demand is not raised by having it in there.

Oh, and one other thing - between no algae, using my Polaris, and occasionally using skimmer socks, I haven't even had to backwash yet this year