short sand filter cycles

[jeffmarc]

My above ground filter is new , only second season in use. It was working great , good pressure high flow. I used a filter aid this year at the start because the pool was cloudy. It cleared up , but now half way into the summer i have to backwash every day to get the flow back up!

Whne i backwash i see some debris come out but only when i rinse does the water turnd really cloudy for a second or two and then clear.

After this the flow is high for about a day.

What can i do ?

Thanks

[duraleigh]

Hi, Jeff,

I'm not sure what a filter aid is. Do you think it's related to your problem?

It sounds like to me your filter is doing it's job....filtering. If it's plugging frequently, you have to find the source that's causing it and clear that up.

[sevver]

I thought the filter aid also, maybe it got into the sand at the top couple inches or so and is causing it to plug up faster? What is a filter aid exactly? I can only imagine it is smaller than the sand, and that the purpose of it is to filter out smaller particles. This is probably the same theory as putting DE in the sand filter. Maybe you should remove an inch or so of sand from the top of the filter medium and see if that helps. It is a sand filter right?

[jeffmarc]

Yes it is a sand filter.
I'm not sur ethe brand or name of the filter aid, but the pool was cloudy and the filter was running 24/7 for a week and it was not clearing up much.
I had the water tested and had added the proper chemistry up on opening the pool to adjust PH, calium hardness shock etc.
They suggested the filter aid to help the filter do a better job filtering and catching the smaller particles , maybe precipatied calcium.

I added it and the poolo was crystal clear in about 3 days.

Everything was fine for a couple weeks and then the filter flow decrteased and the time between backwashes got shorter and shorter to restore the original flow.

So I'm just thinking that stuff has clogged the top end of the filter or something like that .

I was just wondering if anybody knew of anything I might use to backwash it with chemically to dissolve that stuff out of the sand and restore the flow if possible, short of replaceing the sand altogether.

Like i said , the filter is essentially new, only a season and a half of use to date. And last year I did a complete filter cleaning sequence. Draining and running filter cleaner thru etc.

[matt4x4]

Some of these filter aids are designed to create a goop layer in your sand filter, which is supposed to backwash out after you have filtered what needs to be filtered out, it's a short term thing, good for one pool cleaning. If you did not backwash, then this goop has worked it's way into the sand and created a bind with it, this will be really hard to backwash out now.
There are filter cleaners available, I don't know if they do what they say since i do not use any of them since I don't add unnecessary crud to my pool.

It might be worthwhile if instead of dumping more chemicals into the filter, you open it up, see if your sand has clogged solid, if it has, I would just replace it, I think it would be a better long term solution than dropping in more crud to try and "condition" it.