short sand filter cycles

[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.