I have had a problem all summer with dirty water returning to the pool after backwashing and rinsing. I bought a new pump and filter this year. I do not have his issue if I use the waste option. Specifically, when I turn on the filter, I will get five seconds of clean water and then about twenty seconds of dirty water before it clears up. I do check the glass bottle to ensure that the water is clear before I return to the filter position. I just closed my pool for the winter and emptied the filter completely, checking the parts of the filter in case something was broken, but all was good. When draining the filter it was obvious that the sand was dirty as the water draining out was dirty. Thoughts?
Rob, so if all of the parts have been inspected and are good within the filter, then the only other parts to inspect would be the spider gasket inside of the multiport valve, and the inside of the valve itself. Also, if you had been battling a fairly dirty swimming pool including a lot of algae then it may be simply due to the filter holding much of that dirt and dead algae. Sand filters many times merely hold much of that stuff and have to be cleaned well for all of that product to be washed out.
I did check inside the valve itself and all was good. I didn’t mention that after vacuuming in filter mode for a while dirty water begins to return to the pool as well. I do have a gigantic tree that hangs over my property but I have been able to contend with it in past years. At this point I think I will purchase new sand for next summer even though the old stuff is only a year old. (I don’t want to clean it all).
Hi Rob, Yeah sometimes with sand filters after vacuuming they tend to return dirty water back to the pool if there is too much dirt and debris that fills up the filter pretty quickly. Sounds as if you need to change the sand but it also wouldn’t hurt to double-check the GPM rating the filter can handle as you may be pushing too much water pressure through it.