Cement in Pool

[Reluctantfred]

Hi everyone,

I came here out of pure desperation.
I have had a construction team at my house in the past few weeks and they screwed up a bit. Hoping someone on here can give me some advice.

We had a wall plastered near my pool a month or so ago. The plaster mix consisted of plaster sand and cement and water (obviously) not sure what the ratios were, but either way, some of the wet plaster mix ended up in the pool. The wet mix must have unmixed and ended up as a very fine cement dust and a thicker sand layer which settled at the bottom. The sand in question is the same type of sand that would go in the filter, only much dirtier.

I can filter the sand out using the hose and scooping it up, but the filter does not seem to be able to catch the cement particles. After running the pump for a bit the water comes back clean, but if i turn off the filter it somehow settles/permeates through the sand in the filter and the next time i switch the pump on it gets blown back in through the return nozzel, starting the process from scratch. We also currently are under water restrictions because of the drought so refilling isn't an option and the heat of the african summer is picking up nicely, will like to have the pool clean in a week or two.

What would you suggest i use to effectively filter out the cement particles? I've tried using a separate submersible pump to push the water through an old towel that i folded double, but this doesn't seem to work. I still have that pump available and a large paint bucket that i can use to construct some kind of filter. Any ideas suggestions?

Thanks.

[Denniswiseman]

Backwash to get the filter somewhat clean, note the pressure, then add a cup full of Diatomaceous Earth to the filter through the skimmer wait for the pressure increases up to 2PSI (you may need to add more DE)
You should then be able to vacuum the fine particles out. When you backwash you will need to add more DE to get the same filtering. Also if you can slow the pump speed down it helps
You could also try this addon filter for removing iron which should remove your fine particleshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mwFkSbSf54https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzxLac6SSNs

[Reluctantfred]

Hi Dennis,

Thank you so much for being the only one that replied. I have decided to go ahead and purge the dirty water from the pool. After having called a few local experts i have decided to do the following:
Wait for the dust to settle at the bottom, use the vacuum hose and the pump on "waste" setting to get rid of it to a degree. This bypasses the filter. I then refilled the pool and repeated the steps. It seems to be much better now. Will probably have to filter the cloudiness out anyway, but for now at least the water is much cleaner. Just a bit cloudy.
Went to the hardware store today to buy some polyfil, but couldn't get any. Will see how my plan works out.
Thank you very much for the advice and youtube links though.

[Denniswiseman]

Hi
So glad you have resolved this somewhat and taken time to post back your solution as this helps every one else
I would have mentioned vacuuming to waste first but I thought you didn't or wasn't allowed to vacuum to waste and refill because of your water restrictions
BTW is your pool a Leisure Pool

[Reluctantfred]

Hi Dennis,
Yes, I'm not supposed to be refilling. But i've been doing it in small increments. I calculated that i "wasted" around 750l per cycle. I've done around 3 cycles t get to where i am now. Will probably be in a bit of trouble if got caught. Don't worry though, i'll be coughing up when my municipal water bill arrives...
It's worked very well. Another thing that i need to still do is wash the sand in the filter properly. The sand has accumulated a lot of dust and plant material from autumn, so all i've been doing up to now was bypass the filter each time. One person that i spoke to told me to do a backwash with the filter's lid removed. This would then push the water upwards and through the sand removing all dirt as i stir it.
I'm not sure what you mean by "leisure pool" ? Is that a brand? Aren't all pools made for leisure?:)

Some pictures :sorry i didn't take "Before" pics.
http://imgur.com/a/QSQ5h

[Denniswiseman]

Hi Fred
So glad you are getting over this
What you need to do is Deep Clean your filter
Don't do a backwash with your filter lid off it will be far to violent and blow your sand everywhere. You need a gentle flow
My fibreglass pool came from South Africa, Leisure was the name of the company