When you add new sand or zeolite to your filter, MAKE SURE YOU START IT UP IN BACKWASH MODE!!!!!

Since my pool runs year round and I never drain my lines, the only time the filter was started up from ground zero was when I was a brand new pool owner 8 years ago. So--when my nice pretty new liner was in place and my pool refilled, spider gasket replaced in the multiport, 25 lb bag of zeolite put into the filter to replace what the filter had pushed into the pool the year before (different story, now I have a new filter), I threw the power switch with the valve in "filter" mode, and.....voila!!! a horrendous cloud of yellowish-greenish dust from the new zeosand plus all the crud that was in the old sand from over the winter flooded my pool, and in about 30 seconds it was so muddy you couldn't see the pattern in the bottom of the shallow end, let alone the deep!!!!

Although a lot of the crud was the sand itself and settled out, the "dust" part of it simply wouldn't--so after almost 3 weeks of continuous filtering, even with DE thrown in, it wasn't clearing. Water numbers were perfect, held it at shock for almost a week just in case. We have since replaced the sand filter with a new one, new zeolite, started up in backwash and interestingly enough, all the crud that came out with the backwash was the exact color my pool water has been.

I am proud to say now that even though I am NOT a proponent of clarifiers/floc except in extreme situations, we were down to draining and refilling again (30K gallons) or try the clarifier. Put it in last night, ran pump all night, this morning it's crystal except the very bottom "layer" of water in deep end, and even then I can clearly see the pattern (and color) in the deep end, for the first time since the initial pump start.

So....battery on my Poolbuster vac is charging, have new Polaris bag installed, and will be vacuuming up the remaining sand in the morning. Pressure on my sand filter is up 2 psi from yesterday, so it's apparently doing the trick.

I'll never make that mistake again!!!!

Janet