billyo Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 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 allBillyoThats the french piscine plus, not the brit one! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikey Posted March 8, 2007 Share Posted March 8, 2007 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cat Posted March 9, 2007 Share Posted March 9, 2007 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poolguy Posted March 11, 2007 Share Posted March 11, 2007 [quote user="billyo"]Summer is here, almost, and Im going to try andplant a pool. Looked around on the web and had numerous devis done,andam now trying to decided between an inground steel pool fromwaterair and an inground plastic kit pool from piscine plus, Iveread alot about the steel pools but does anyone have any experience ofthe plastic kit pools?Also, I was speaking to a salesman who was adamant that cartridgefilters are the way forward becasue sand filters use about 400l perweek to back wash, is this the case or was he talking bo....ks?Cheers allBillyoThats 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 tothat you have already gleaned.As my two posters that followed have mentioned I am a fan of Zeolite as thefiltration medium of choice. Please forgive me for explaining this in largerterms as it is a very important concept in Pool maintenance. We shall examine the methods available on the market and listtheir drawbacks and advantages. Sand filtration contained within a Pressure vessel.It’s the most common and easily available in many sizes and relativelyinexpensive. It resembles a large plastic ball through which the water is pushedby 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 makesthe 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 onceevery week (depending on the usage of the pool, you backwash for between 30secs 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 litresof water out of your pool depending on the size of your pump. Usually this is compensatedby 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 micronand sometimes up to 50 micron. That means that everything smaller than that willgo round and round and will not be filtered out. If you shine a torch in yourpool at night, you will see these particles still in the water. It’s not good, itsnot 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 usuallyfeature a poolside installation in which either one of 2 large paper cylindersare submerged in the water through which the water is sucked by the pump. Aboutonce a week or so you will put on your wellies and take out these cartouches andusing the hose, clean all the filtered muck from in between the fins of the papercartage. This will take about 20 mins each to do properly and use about 30-80 litresof water from your hose, I don’t recommend that you try to power wash them asthis will damage the cartouche. Once ever 3-4 weeks you should soak and agitateyour 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 toabout 15 micron or 10 in cases of very high quality and there is nothing to reallygo wrong as such however there are some disadvantages; namely that as the paperfilter clogs up with much the filtration rate goes down (fine and finer) butthe capacity of the pump to circulate water also goes down as it cannot suckenough through. So if your pool is circulating all the water each 4 hours as istypical with these systems, then that could turn into 5, 6 or up to 8 hours ifthe filter is very dirty. This is very inefficient and not hygienic at all, so inorder to sustain a clean and healthy pool it is necessary to clean these cartouchesregularly, and if you’re are careful they should last up to about 5 years or more. Filter BagThis is much the same as the paper cartouche in that it isfitted pool side and the pump is sucking water through it. These are available downto 5 micron but are not really any better than a cartouche. To clean them youwill need to remove the bag, hose it off and every week or so put it in thewashing machine to get out the oils. The disadvantage is that the surface are isvastly 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 filterdown to 5 micron. It is necessary to regularly clean the system out and top up themedium with slurry, which you put down the skimmer box. The earth is quite expensivecompared to sand and has a shorter life, as suppliers recommend that it be changedevery year in heavy use pools. Using the filter is the same procedure as a sandfilter as there is a multivalve to manage the flow of water. For many yearsthis was the most effective filtration system available on the market. Zeolite By far the most effective, easiest, cleanest, and most economicalfiltration method on the market uses Zeolite (‘clinoptilolite’ –A mineral produced during volcanic activity and has much the same propertiesas pumice; that is a cellular structure and a very large surface area per gram.) This method employed a traditional pressure vesselfilter through which water is pushed by the pump. The Zeolite is inside the filterjust covering the top horizontal bar (about 65% capacity), So the method of managingwater is the same as a traditional filter with a multivalve, so it takes onlyabout a minute or so to clean the filter using a backwash. Because of the increasedsurface 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 yearsbefore the need to change. The many benefits of this medium include that itwill filter down to 1 micron, so all micronic material is extracted from yourpool including hair, skin cells, water borne parasites and multicell organisms.This will vastly reduce the need for chlorine so the level can be safely droppedto about 1.2 ppm which is a saving in cost and increase in swimmer comfort- especiallythose with sensitive skin. It will remove ammonia, which is responsible for producingthe ‘pool smell’ as it reacts with chlorine to produce an oxidised compound knownas ‘chloramines’. So long as the pool has a stable pH at 7.2, these chloraminesare responsible for red eyes and skin irritation, which is sometime wrongly attributedto chlorine. With Zeolite this is removed from the scene, so long as the mediumis conditioned each year, usually during winter. In all, in return for a modestincrease in investment over sand, Zeolite will keep the water in your pool cleanerand 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 tosee the detail, even the date on a 20 cent coin at the bottom of your pool, soclean that when you shine to torch at night, there are no suspended particles. Thebest and most effective filtration and therefore pool management you could choose. I would always couple this exemplar filtration witha pump, which is sized to circulate the entire contents of the pool within 3hours. This will ensure that all contaminants are extracted in a timely fashionrather than to let them linger and feed bacteria and other nasties.I hope that this has been of some help.Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billyo Posted March 16, 2007 Author Share Posted March 16, 2007 Cheers for your replies, Poolguy your a genius, if you ever write a book let me know!Billyo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poolguy Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 Thanks for your kind words Billyo and others.A Book..... HHHHHMMMMM yes welllI am trying to get something like it together on my website.Work in progress...... time is the problem.Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suandpete Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JJ Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suandpete Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Poolguy Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 Thanks to JJ for helping out.When you replace the filter contents with Zeolite, you must conpletelyempty it and clean out of all sand and gravel- put it some where awayfromchlidren as it is very smelly and manky.As zeolite is lighter than sand it will only use about 60% of theweight for the same volume. So for Sue andPete your 165kg of filtersand would be replaced by about 100kg of Zeolite. Thatsounds as though it is filtering a very small pool - about 40cubic meters I would guess. As you will read above, It works better ifthe circulation is 3 hours for the entire contents of the pool.Andrew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suandpete Posted March 17, 2007 Share Posted March 17, 2007 thankyou for such prompt replies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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