Hello,
I moved into my house over the winter and I'm trying to get the pre-existing pool going. Before this I knew NOTHING about pools.

My pool is 30x15 and an est 15k gallons. It's an above ground pool but it is somewhat in ground. It has a deep end and to me it seems like an in ground pool. I have a DE filter and a 1.5 hp pump. It seems the system is fairly old. The first time I plugged in the pump it spewed water out of the hose which connects the filter and pump. So I replaced that one and the pump worked but not much came out of the jet so I replaced all the hoses cause they seemed pretty leaky. The water at this point was pretty green. I got the filter going pretty good and actually had it going for several hours and then I read that you shouldn't run the filter without DE in it. Woops. So I put DE in and the pump pushes water but it doesn't seem like much. The pressure shoots up to 20psi but sometimes fluctuates up and down pretty rapidly (from 10 to 20 psi). It generally runs at 20psi. I thought that seemed high so I opened up the filter. The filter elements were covered with green crud, I'm assuming this was DE covered with algea. So I hosed them off thoroughly and put them back in and put DE in. It still runs about the same. The pressure goes up to ~20psi and the water flow isn't great.

So my question is, could my filter elements be screwed up? I read you shouldn't run it for more than a min or two without DE and I ran it for several hours with a really dirty pool so it seems maybe I did. I'm pretty close to saying forget it and just going and getting a new system, a cartridge one as they seem to be the easiest to maintain. It seems that would be better than buying new filter elements for $35 each, especially since the pump/filter seem to be pretty old (man I wish I would've asked the seller for info about the pool!).

thanks a lot,
Ryan