I should have torn down the filter and gave it a good cleaning when I moved in last year, but since everything was working good, I didn't bother. I knew something needed to be done because the filter pressure after backwashing was still 12 psi.

It's pretty amazing that all those grids fit in such a small space. All total, it provides 48 sq ft of filter area. I can also tell that nobody has done a complete teardown on the filter in a while because after doing a pretty thorough backwash, you can see the bucket full of DE that was still stuck on the grids. I'm guessing that's about 12 pounds of the stuff, about the same amount needed to coat the filter for normal operation. That means that there should have been, at most, a 1/16" thick coat of DE on the grids. I had many areas where the coating was 1/2" - 3/4"!!

So, after cleaning and recoating with DE, my pressure is around 8 psi, a far cry from the 14 psi it was before the cleaning. The reduction in backpressure means I can filter more water in the same time...so I can reduce my pump hours if I wanted to, and save some operating costs.


Michael (wireless) IM: mwsmith70