[quote=walterwhite]Scaredy attempted to clean a diatemacious earth filter this weekend. It was a nasty experience. He managed to survive and reassemble the beast but just barely. It probably wouldve been worth 130 to have an experienced hand have at it. Now I kind of know how to do it though so if I write down a few critical mistakes it might work out next tome w half the effort.
Are there any tips on maintaining a pool on the cheap?
Can I run the filter 4 h instead of the 8 I’d been told? I am attempting to do everything myself and any moneysaving ideas are welcome
should I replace the 2 hp old pump for a new efficient one?[/quote]
We had a pool when we lived in San Diego (relatively low maintenance) and now have one that is surrounded by 150′ oak trees (high maintenance – especially squirrel removal). I am the chief pool maintainer and have gotten more helpful information (including sources for replacement parts) from poolcenter.com than any other site, and it’s free.
How long you have to run the pump is related to the power of the pump and the size of the pool. The general suggestion is to run an amount equal to the volume of the pool each day (you can look of the flow volume on the internet). But I have also heard that that might be more than necessary: See this article called Saving Money Around the Pool from poolcenter.com – which looks pretty good: http://blog.poolcenter.com/article.asp?articleid=6057; it suggests that you can get away with less. On the other hand, if you have a solar heater, you may not get the benefit of it without the pump running . . . Also, if you have an automated cleaner that needs the filter pump to be running, you also lose out on that part.
In a dry place like SD, there is a lot of heat loss through evaporation, so a good way to try to save money on heating would be to try the liquid solar blanket (also reduces need to replenish water). I’ve looked into this a bit and the science behind these seems pretty good; when used as directed they are supposed to maintain the average pool at a temp about 5 degrees higher than otherwise – although there are a lot of factors to consider. Reducing evaporation (such as by leaving the waterfall turned off when not needed) is another way to save heating money.
DE filters have a very fine filtration, so if they get clogged up you can lose a lot in terms of pump efficiency. One thing that I’ve stopped using are flocculating agents – they bind to the dirt, which helps filtration, but then the resulting junk seems to bind to the DE in the filter to make sludge.
If you have any problems with rust stains, bulk vitamin C (at about $50) is wildly cheaper than a drain and clean ($1200) and works like magic. Its the active ingredient in a lot of the rust stain removers – much cheaper to add a little from time to time than to buy the prepared formulas.
I also buy my chlorine on the internet and have it shipped – it’s cheaper than buying it at the pool stores around here. Most of the chemicals are, but you have to shop around a bit.
Finally, my experience has been that you get more accurate water tests from pool stores that use individual cuvettes to test the water, as opposed to the ones who use the paper strips. That helps you save in terms of the volume of chemicals you buy. It also avoids having to drain water from the pool to lower chemical levels that have risen too high (such as cyanuric acid, which never breaks down).
That’s all I can think of right now – except it’s really good to keep squirrels and bats out of your pool ;). I’ll post more later if I think of anything.
