Algae or Pollen/Dirt

[Bekka]

I've had a similar problem for the last few years. We initially thought sand from the filter was blowing into the pool and settling in patches on the bottom of our 24' AG. Maybe we should have dealt with this a few years ago when it started but we were naive being new pool owners and I guess in denial not wanting to deal with problems that cost more money. The patches were not sand colored, more like dark brown grit. If you walked in the area whatever it was light enough to scatter into little faint clouds but over-night it would settle again. No amount of backwashing and scrubbing seemed to work. The very next day after a good vacuuming and backwash, I would see patches of settled grit again. This year I decided to settle down and do some heavy reading while opening our pool. After reading this pool forum over and over again, I realized whatever this was was so fine when vacuumed it was just going through the filter and back into the pool. Dirt? Pollen? Maybe both. Really not sure. We do have alot of pollen in this area in the late spring, also about the time this all started there was a lot of road construction going on. I remember back then our porch & cars had light coverings of dust & dirt from the construction. We weren't pool smart enough yet to make a connection. Ok, back to this spring, initially, we were going to take apart the Hayward sand filter but at the last minute [thank goodness] I decided we should try less drastic actions to rule out other more minor things first. Plus, we were really unsure if this was sand or something else. I found the posts about adding DE to catch the finer particles that might be too small for a sand filter to catch and thought what the heck, its not going to hurt to start there. Ok, its been over a week since first adding a small amount of DE to my skimmer. I haven't had a hint since adding the DE of whatever it was that use to settle to the bottom of my pool for the last 3 years. It was such a simple fix and I wish I had read more on this forum a long time ago. Thanks for all the information you guys share ; ) Bekka