Didn't expect to empty the pump basket daily this week

Started by swamp_tyler · · 3 replies
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#1
we had some wind kick up dust and palm junk this week and i swear the pump basket looked like a salad by the next morning, been used to checking it once every few days max. first year with this pool so i guess i just assumed a normal week meant normal debris but phoenix wind apparently doesn't care. pressure barely moved on the gauge which is the confusing part, basket looked packed but psi looked fine. anyone else have weeks like that where the visual doesn't match what the gauge says, or am i just getting lucky it hasn't caught up to the filter yet. still feels weird how much stuff blows in without a single leaf falling that i can actually see landing in the water.

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#2
Basket looking full with flat psi tracks with what I see on mine too, the basket catches bulk debris before it ever gets to the filter side so it can hide a lot of junk without moving the gauge at all. Mine usually sits around 9-10 psi clean, and I have had it packed with palm litter and leaf bits and still read 10 psi because none of that fine stuff had migrated past the basket yet. The gauge is really telling you about the filter media loading, not what's sitting in the basket, so those two things drifting apart for a while is normal, not luck.
#3
Marcus is right that the basket and the gauge are measuring two different things, that's exactly it. My old Polaris 280 does the same job in reverse, it grabs the bigger stuff off the floor before it ever gets to the skimmer or the pump basket, so on windy weeks here off the lake I'll pull the bag and it's stuffed and my pump basket is still pretty clean. Two different filters catching two different sizes of junk, gauge doesn't care about either till the media itself starts loading up.

For what it's worth mine runs about 8 psi clean, and I've had it packed with cottonwood fluff and still sat right at 8. Took a good week of that fluff actually working its way through the basket before I saw the needle creep up. So no, you're not lucky, that's just how the system is supposed to work, basket's the coarse trap and the gauge tells you about the fine stuff after it.
#4
Yeah the fluff comparison tracks, dave. Only thing I'd add for swamp_tyler, when wind is actually loading the basket that fast I'd knock the run time up or shift some of it to daylight hours for a few days so you're not sitting there packed for 8+ hrs overnight doing nothing for circulation.

Once it's full it's basically restricting flow before the water even hits the filter, gauge just cant see that part yet.