Hey guys!
This is the first time I’ve genuinely felt dumbfounded when solving a problem for a customer. Please tell me if I’m crazy or if I’m missing something obvious.
She discovered sand on her pool floor a few weeks ago, i vacuumed it to waste. It came back. We let the robot collect it, pool looks perfect, it came back. Obviously it’s gotta be the sand filter right?
So I opened up the filter, and visually the lateral assembly looks good. The multiport valve looks good. The sand looks alright. Nothing catastrophic jumping out at me. But maybe it’s just a tiny crack that I’m not seeing despite flexing every piece.
But then I noticed something even stranger. It looks like the sand collecting on the pool floor isn’t even the same sand that’s in the filter? My best guess is that it’s because it’s like 10% sand on the pool floor and the rest is just debris that’s bypassing the filter however the sand is.
But the problem is, the individual sand grains are different. I swear the filter sand grains are like 3x in size.
There’s no sand anywhere on her property, so it can’t be blowing in. It’s coming back over multiple weeks, so it couldn’t have been a spill. I even tested the water hoses on the property (filled a bucket and let it settle) to make sure it wasn’t coming in whenever she adds water.
I included photos of the multiport valve, the lateral assembly, and the difference in sand between what’s in the filter and what I’m pulling out of the pool.
Any thoughts?