Pool choice!

[billyo]

Summer is here, almost, and Im going to try and plant a pool. Looked around on the web and had numerous devis done,and am now trying to decided between an inground steel pool from waterair and an inground plastic kit pool from piscine plus, Ive read alot about the steel pools but does anyone have any experience of the plastic kit pools?

Also, I was speaking to a salesman who was adamant that cartridge filters are the way forward becasue sand filters use about 400l per week to back wash, is this the case or was he talking bo....ks?

Cheers all

Billyo

Thats the french piscine plus, not the brit one!

[Mikey]

i have a waterair pool, great pool very happy, except for the cartridge filter it came with. very small and needed cleaning at least 2 times a week. changed it for a much bigger and better filtration system from poolguy using zelbrite instead of sand. i only need to backwash every 2 or 3 weeks and the water has never been cleaner.

from my experience cartridge filters are not worth the bother, go for a classic filter with zelbrite instead of sand. much less maintenance and backwashing is far easier than rincing a cartridge.

[Cat]

Most people seem to agree that zelbrite is the way to go for the filtration medium.  It's worth remembering that if using a salt based system there may be environmental restrictions on where and how you backwash the filter.

I expect Poolguy will be here soon to give us the full monty, and also to remind us that water clarity has a lot to do with how quickly the pump totally replenishes the volume of water in your pool.

[Poolguy]

[quote user="billyo"]

Summer is here, almost, and Im going to try and

plant a pool. Looked around on the web and had numerous devis done,and

am now trying to decided between an inground steel pool from

waterair and an inground plastic kit pool from piscine plus, Ive

read alot about the steel pools but does anyone have any experience of

the plastic kit pools?

Also, I was speaking to a salesman who was adamant that cartridge

filters are the way forward becasue sand filters use about 400l per

week to back wash, is this the case or was he talking bo....ks?

Cheers all

Billyo

Thats the french piscine plus, not the brit one!

[/quote]

I salute my friends at Piscine Plus and offer some additional information about filtration which you might find helpfull to

that you have already gleaned.

As my two posters that followed have mentioned I am a fan of Zeolite as the

filtration medium of choice. Please forgive me for explaining this in larger

terms as it is a very important concept in Pool maintenance.

We shall examine the methods available on the market and list

their drawbacks and advantages.

Sand filtration contained within a Pressure vessel.

It’s the most common and easily available in many sizes and relatively

inexpensive. It resembles a large plastic ball through which the water is pushed

by the pump, all of which needs to be house some way from the pool, usually in a

‘pump shed’. Its easy to use with just a lever on a multivalve to turn which makes

the System go to Filtration, self cleaning (backwash), waste, circulate (bypass),

close, and rinse. Not much to learn and not much to do to maintain it, about once

every week (depending on the usage of the pool, you backwash for between 30

secs and 1 minute, this reverses the path of the filtration and forces water the

‘wrong way’ through the filter and out to waste. That takes about 200-800 litres

of water out of your pool depending on the size of your pump. Usually this is compensated

by rainfall, but in the height of Summer you will need to top up with the hose.

What’s bad about this system is that it only filters at best to about 30 micron

and sometimes up to 50 micron. That means that everything smaller than that will

go round and round and will not be filtered out. If you shine a torch in your

pool at night, you will see these particles still in the water. It’s not good, its

not clean and you will need more chlorine in the pool to keep the water sterile.

Cartouche – paper cartridge system.

These are widely available now with many pools, they usually

feature a poolside installation in which either one of 2 large paper cylinders

are submerged in the water through which the water is sucked by the pump. About

once a week or so you will put on your wellies and take out these cartouches and

using the hose, clean all the filtered muck from in between the fins of the paper

cartage. This will take about 20 mins each to do properly and use about 30-80 litres

of water from your hose, I don’t recommend that you try to power wash them as

this will damage the cartouche. Once ever 3-4 weeks you should soak and agitate

your filters in a warm soapy water solution to strip away the grease and oil,

which cannot be moved another way. This system is very simple, filter down to

about 15 micron or 10 in cases of very high quality and there is nothing to really

go wrong as such however there are some disadvantages; namely that as the paper

filter clogs up with much the filtration rate goes down (fine and finer) but

the capacity of the pump to circulate water also goes down as it cannot suck

enough through. So if your pool is circulating all the water each 4 hours as is

typical with these systems, then that could turn into 5, 6 or up to 8 hours if

the filter is very dirty. This is very inefficient and not hygienic at all, so in

order to sustain a clean and healthy pool it is necessary to clean these cartouches

regularly, and if you’re are careful they should last up to about 5 years or more.

Filter Bag

This is much the same as the paper cartouche in that it is

fitted pool side and the pump is sucking water through it. These are available down

to 5 micron but are not really any better than a cartouche. To clean them you

will need to remove the bag, hose it off and every week or so put it in the

washing machine to get out the oils. The disadvantage is that the surface are is

vastly less than the cartouche and so its capacity to hold muck is vastly less,

giving rise to the need to clean more often, about every 2-3 days during summer.

Water useage from the hose is about the same as cartouche.

Diatomaceous earth

This again is a pressure vessel like the sand filtration system,

only that it is filled with a very fine red earth, (diatomite) which can filter

down to 5 micron. It is necessary to regularly clean the system out and top up the

medium with slurry, which you put down the skimmer box. The earth is quite expensive

compared to sand and has a shorter life, as suppliers recommend that it be changed

every year in heavy use pools. Using the filter is the same procedure as a sand

filter as there is a multivalve to manage the flow of water. For many years

this was the most effective filtration system available on the market.

Zeolite

By far the most effective, easiest, cleanest, and most economical

filtration method on the market uses Zeolite (‘clinoptilolite’

–A mineral produced during volcanic activity and has much the same properties

as pumice; that is a cellular structure and a very large surface area per gram.)

This method employed a traditional pressure vessel

filter through which water is pushed by the pump. The Zeolite is inside the filter

just covering the top horizontal bar (about 65% capacity), So the method of managing

water is the same as a traditional filter with a multivalve, so it takes only

about a minute or so to clean the filter using a backwash. Because of the increased

surface are of the Zeolite you only need to do this once every two weeks or so,

longer is the pool is covered and not in use, and will last for about 5 years

before the need to change. The many benefits of this medium include that it

will filter down to 1 micron, so all micronic material is extracted from your

pool including hair, skin cells, water borne parasites and multicell organisms.

This will vastly reduce the need for chlorine so the level can be safely dropped

to about 1.2 ppm which is a saving in cost and increase in swimmer comfort- especially

those with sensitive skin. It will remove ammonia, which is responsible for producing

the ‘pool smell’ as it reacts with chlorine to produce an oxidised compound known

as ‘chloramines’. So long as the pool has a stable pH at 7.2, these chloramines

are responsible for red eyes and skin irritation, which is sometime wrongly attributed

to chlorine. With Zeolite this is removed from the scene, so long as the medium

is conditioned each year, usually during winter. In all, in return for a modest

increase in investment over sand, Zeolite will keep the water in your pool cleaner

and easier to manage than any other filtration system. As others have testified,

the water is so clear that it hard to see it at all sometimes. Clear enough to

see the detail, even the date on a 20 cent coin at the bottom of your pool, so

clean that when you shine to torch at night, there are no suspended particles. The

best and most effective filtration and therefore pool management you could choose. I would always couple this exemplar filtration with

a pump, which is sized to circulate the entire contents of the pool within 3

hours. This will ensure that all contaminants are extracted in a timely fashion

rather than to let them linger and feed bacteria and other nasties.

I hope that this has been of some help.

Andrew

[billyo]

Cheers for your replies, Poolguy your a genius, if you ever write a book let me know!

Billyo

[Poolguy]

Thanks for your kind words Billyo and others.

A Book..... HHHHHMMMMM yes welll

I am trying to get something like it together on  my website.

Work in progress......   time is the problem.

Andrew

[Suandpete]

    We have a sand filter at present and i guess that at some stage we will need to replace the sand.  Is it possible to replace it with zeolite but retain the same filter?

[JJ]

Sue and Pete,

To save Poolguy's time, the answer is yes, you can, I am in the same situation and I am about to do the same.

[Suandpete]

    Thanks for that, I see from our booklet that our filter contains 40kg gravel and 125 kg sand - do we still need the gravelm if we use zeolite?

[Poolguy]

Thanks to JJ for helping out.

When you replace the filter contents with Zeolite, you must conpletely

empty it and clean out of all sand and gravel- put it some where away

fromchlidren as it is very smelly and manky.

As zeolite is lighter than sand it will only use about 60% of the

weight for the same volume. So for Sue andPete your 165kg of filter

sand would be replaced by about 100kg of Zeolite. That

sounds as though it is filtering a very small pool  - about 40

cubic meters I would guess. As you will read above, It works better if

the circulation is 3 hours for the entire contents of the pool.

Andrew

[Suandpete]

    thankyou for such prompt replies.