Surprised how little sand was actually left when I opened the tank

Started by Jason Okafor · · 3 replies
Back to the forum
Reply
#1
Pulled the lid off my sand filter this week just to poke around before summer gets going and the sand level was way lower than I expected, maybe half of what it should be. Pool's from 2015 so the sand's probably original, nobody ever mentioned changing it. Flow's been fine, pressure normal, so it wasn't on my radar at all. Googled around and apparently sand channels and breaks down over years even without obvious symptoms. Didn't realize that was even a thing, figured sand just sits there forever. Gonna redo it myself this spring, not paying the pool store to dump a few bags of sand in a tank. Anyone else actually track how old their filter sand is or just wait for a problem to tell you.

3 Replies

#2
honestly no clue how old mine is, that's the annoying part of buying a foreclosure, zero maintenance history came with the house. i popped my tank open last fall just out of paranoia after fighting the swamp back to life and the sand looked fine to me but i also have nothing to compare it to since this is literally my first pool ever. pressure's been steady so i just crossed my fingers and moved on. kinda wish there was a sticker or something filter companies put the fill date on, would make this so much easier instead of guessing based on "pressure seems normal ig
#3
Jason, what's your pressure reading at a clean start versus where you're at now, since 2015 sand channeling that bad usually shows up as a few psi higher at the gauge even if flow still feels fine, if you never logged a baseline that's the piece you're missing to know if it was actually a problem or just cosmetic.
#4
Marcus is right on the baseline thing, that's the piece everyone skips. I didn't log mine either for the first few years and had no idea if 18psi was high or just normal for my setup until I actually wrote it down after a fresh sand change and compared going forward. Now I jot it on a sticky note inside the equipment pad cover, sounds dumb but it works better than trying to remember what "normal" felt like two years ago.

One thing that gets missed in the pressure conversation though is flow rate out of the returns, not just the gauge number. My pressure crept up slow enough over a couple years that I didn't catch it on the gauge alone, but the jets in the shallow end were noticeably weaker before the gauge ever screamed at me. Sand channeling tends to let water find the path of least resistance through the gaps instead of filtering evenly, so you can get decent pressure and still be filtering worse than you think. Worth feeling the return flow next time you're out there, not just glancing at the number.