Cartridge filter cleaning finally clicked, should've done this years ago

Started by Karen Delgado · · 3 replies
Back to the forum
Reply
#1
Been rinsing my cartridges with the garden hose for four seasons and wondering why pressure crept up faster every month. Finally sat down and did a real soak, filter cleaner solution overnight, not just a quick spray. Pressure after startup was the lowest it's been since I owned this pad. Turns out hose rinsing just knocks off surface dirt, the calcium and oil film down in the pleats stays put and builds up. Out here with 400 ppm fill water that film is basically grout. Doing the soak twice a season now instead of never. Small thing, took me way too long to bother with it. If your cartridge pleats look grayish even after rinsing, that's not clean, that's just less dirty.

3 Replies

#2
Karen, the grayish pleats thing is spot on, I don't run cartridges myself but my buddy does and he said the same thing clicked for him last year. One thing that gets left out of this is letting them actually dry all the way before you put them back in, soaking gets the calcium film out but if you shove them back in still damp you can get that musty smell building up in the folds over time. Worth having a second set so one can dry fully while the other runs, cheap insurance against that.
#3
We actually run a sand filter now but I had cartridges for years at a rental we used to own up here before I understood any of this, and Karen's grayish pleat description took me right back, I remember holding mine up to the light thinking it looked clean enough and my pressure gauge told a completely different story every single time. Took me probably two years of creeping startup pressure before somebody at the pool store finally said the hose is just rinsing the top layer and the hard water film underneath doesn't care about your garden hose at all.

Jason's point about drying them fully is the part I'd have never thought of back then, I was the guy shoving a damp cartridge back in because I wanted the pool running again before my morning swim. Having a second set so one's always dry and ready makes a lot of sense, cheap compared to buying a whole new cartridge every year because the pleats never got a real chance to dry out. Good luck with it, Karen, sounds like you've already got it figured out better than I ever did on cartridges.
#4
Karen what are you soaking in, straight muriatic diluted down or an actual cartridge cleaner product. Makes a difference with 400 ppm fill water, acid soak cuts calcium a lot faster than the degreaser-type cleaners which are really built for oil and sunscreen not scale. Had a customer last week swear her overnight soak wasn't working and she'd been using a solution meant for body oil, swapped her to a scale remover and pressure dropped like 5 psi on the next startup.