question about de filter

[jaxpool]

my husband and i just took apart the de filter and everything is running much better now. I told my friend what we did and he asked if we cleaned all the sand out of it, i told him yes and he said it's a sand filter and we should not have cleaned out all of the sand. I'm really confused now because there was only a little sand at the bottom of the filter. I didn't even know we had a sand filter. My question is the d.e. filter and sand filter the same thing ? If so, how much sand do I put in and how do I put it in? Obviously we are very new at this and our pool people didn't really explain this to us.

[Walter]

You would have a whole lot more sand if it was a sand filter, A DE filter uses a powder to coat the grids, did it have grids? You have to replace the DE if you washed it all out, I recommend getting some info from the filter manf.

[Backglass]

My question is the d.e. filter and sand filter the same thing ?

No. DE and sand filters are two completely different animals.

A sand filter literally has sand in it...a LOT of sand, 200-900 pounds! A DE filter uses, well..."DE" (Diatomaceous Earth) which is a pumice-like powdery stone substance. Sand filters only need to be changed after several years of use but a DE filter needs to be re-loaded with more DE after every backwash.

If you haven't added any new DE to your filter after backwashing...then it is empty and not filtering anything.