Forecast: hot and sunny. Pool: cloudy and sucking money

[Sherri P]

I've owned this pool for 23 years and grew up with a pool at my parents', so I am no novice to pool maintenance. Three days ago we installed a new filter, only the second new filter we've had to install in 23 years. Despite my repeatedly reminding him and despite the explicit installation instructions, he started the new filter without backwashing the sand first. The pool was already a science experiment, with water so green it would make a leprechaun proud, but that is not unnormal for us in spring. We never put chemicals in during winter. In spring I hit it with an algaecide, heavy chlorine, and then a little clarifier if needed. Oddly, pH has never been an issue. In fact, I haven't even tested water for the past few years, pool chemistry is that predictable and stable. But I digress. I put in my usual heavy dose of chlorine, followed with algaecide and got a good kill, as always. My problem is the clarity. No, I didn't kill my husband for failing to backwash the sand first, but let's just say the water is so cloudy that I could dump his body in there and no one could see it until they drained the pool. I put in 1/2 gal of clarifier. No result. I've added DE through the skimmer, not much better. I've backwashed two or three times everyday, but I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. My choices are to empty the pool and refill, put in a ton of flocculent or clarifier, which would ruin my new sand, or move. Also, I only use a Polaris to vacuum the pool, gave away our vacuum equipment. It's a dark bottom pool. We live on the edge of a native area with lots of trees. The Polaris does a great job, I have no problem if there are one or two leaves at the bottom of the pool, certainly not worth the headache of hand vacuuming. So, does anyone have any suggestions for cleaning the fine particulates of sand out of my pool other than those I've named?

[swahl002]

we had this problem too with a new filter.
I think over time it resolved itself -- we knew it was just sand so we swam anyway!
After a few days of not being in the pool it would settle - so
we vacuumed off the bottom with the backwash on -- got a lot of it out.
Also added some chemical to the skimmer basket which was supposed to make a gel in the sand of the filter
to help it capture finer particles. I think that helped too.

Good luck!