POOL---DE Filter Powder in Pool

[Ron in NY]

I think I'm getting DE filter powder in my pool. Every morning when I wake up, I look out my window and see these small gray patches on the floor of my above ground pool. When I come home from work, I vacuum it up, and it's back in the AM. My filter is on a timer and runs from midnight to 5 AM. I take the filter apart at the end of every summer and clean it so I am totally familiar with how it operates. It is only 3 years old. It's a Hayward EC-40. I am going to plug the supply and return lines this Saturday and pull the filter apart. How obvious is a bad "finger" ??? I never had one go bad in 20 years. Is a bad one easy to spot, or am I going to have to pull the whole plate apart and inspect each one by itself ??? What's your experience ???

RON ======================================================== Remove the ZZZ from my E-mail address to send me E-mail.

[hrhofmann]

=A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 =A0 RON

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For starters, why not not run the filter one night and see what you see the next morning??

[Steve B]

Do you have a solar heater or any ABS piping? That will cause the shading you describe. If not, then why is it gray whey DE is pure white?

I just changed from a DE filter after using one for about ten years. They are good, but they DO have their nuances. And one of them is a very large surface area that is very fragile and easy to get holes in, and hard to spot. Unless you're a woman, and then you just point them right out straight away.

Steve ;-)

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A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.

[Steve B]

For starters, why not not run the filter one night and see what you see the next morning??

reply: I do that in the summer to keep the pool water temperatures down, as in Las Vegas circulating during the day has produced pool temperatures of

103F with a solar heater. What would circulating at night do in regard to the water coloration issue? I'm curious.

Steve

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A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.

[hrhofmann]

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

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The OP said he runs the filter at night. If he doesn't run it one night, it would be good to know that the deposits he usually sees are either there or not there. If they still show up with no filter running, then they are not due to any filter action, but something else is going on. Just one more piece of the puzzle.

[Steve B]

The OP said he runs the filter at night. If he doesn't run it one night, it would be good to know that the deposits he usually sees are either there or not there. If they still show up with no filter running, then they are not due to any filter action, but something else is going on. Just one more piece of the puzzle.

reply: I had grey powder coming out of my inlets, and it was an indication of coming solar heater failure. It went from grey to black FAST, like two days. I would think that grey is the omen of something bad, since it is a precursor to black. What is black in that system? Solar panels? ABS pipe? Not much else.

HTH

Steve

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[Twayne]

The way I always tested them was to remove the whole assembly with all the fingers still attached. Bump the pump a couple times first, then pull the finger assy out. The top openings in them are good for placing a hose on them to squirt water into them but won't seal hard enough to damage the filter material on each finger. It's usually pretty easy to spot a ripped-open finger; just do them one at a time and watch how the water comes out of each one. i've had an EC-40 myself so I know exactly what you have there: You can see into it enough to see the water coming out of the inner fingers; just keep the sun at your back.

That said, if the fingers are ten or more years old, you're likely going to have more going bad soon. It would be wise to invest in and replace them all. Check all the O-rings for damage/wear while you're at it, and the rubber flap at the bottom, next to the inlet pipe. That rubber is sort of a valve to keep water from backing up thru the pipes when the pump motor is off. The DE you get from bumping will likely at first fairly closely match the color of the DE going into your pool. Identifying DE IN the pool is easy, too; it'll have the same coarse feeling the DE from the pump has. DE is just thousands of tiny, little shells with sharp edges. Do NOT allow pets to injest it!

HTH,

Twayne`