Swimming Pool Today

The heart of clean swimming pool water is the swimming pool filter. It is thus important to keep up with your swimming pool filter maintenance. Having fresh swimming pool filter supplies helps keep the levels of dirt, algae, bacteria, and other debris in your pool at reasonable levels.

Swimming Pool Filter Cartridges

The majority of swimming pool filters today use a simple filter cartridge. As the pool water travels through this cartridge the impurities are trapped in the cartridge. Swimming pool filter cartridges are so popular because they are simple to work with and do a fairly good job. The majority of these cartridges consist of a very special material blend with tiny holes for the water to pass through. Most debris, including algae and bacteria, will eventually be trapped in here, even if not on the first pass through. Replacing swimming pool filter cartridges is as simple as pulling up the cartridge and rinsing it.

What you need to know about maintaining these cartridges is how to maximize the effectiveness of rinsing the cartridge. You should rinse with the water flow running down off the filter. The mistake made by many is to rinse with the water going directly in to the filter. The problem is that this is how the filter works to trap debris, so it will only catch impurities, rather than releasing them when washed in this manner.

Sharp Sand Filters

While sand filters can operate as stand-alone swimming pool filters, they are most often used together with cartridge filters. A sand filter isn’t designed to filter out sand, but instead uses sand as the filter. The sand used in sand filters has a special filtering composition. It consists of specs of silica, no larger than half a millimeter. This sand is characterized by sharp edges, which tend to grab and hold particles that move through the sand filters.

The more that is filtered, the smaller the spaces between the particles. So you can expect the filter system to clog up over time. You generally have a valve that can be reversed to send most of the waste out of the filter. This should be done about six times per year. If you are purchasing sand for a swimming pool filter, be sure it is #20 silica sand. But, you should only need to replace the sand about every three to four years.

Fine Diatomaceous Earth Filters

For a really clean pool, you can use diatomaceous earth filters. These filters can filter out particles down to a few microns. Diatomaceous earth filters consist of the skeletons of sea creatures, called diatoms, which are ground into a fine powder. These swimming pool filters are a lot less common because they require more maintenance. While they can be used together with other pool filtration systems, you don’t usually need any other swimming pool filters when you have a diatomaceous earth filter.

Like the sand filter, the diatomaceous earth filter is cleaned by reversing the valve. Because the filter collects so much debris, it must be cleaned in this manner each month. You will also need to replace your diatomaceous earth filter annually, because when you reverse the valve a lot of caked on diatomaceous earth is also removed from your filter.