You’ll have to backwash clean your filter. Unless you have a cartridge filter, you’ll have to backwash.

Here, we’re using a top-mounted dial vaalve in a sand filter. Snd should be backwashed between once a week and once a month depending on the amount of dirt and organics in the pool.

Here in Phoenix, we have a lot of dust. The closer you are to a mountain preserve or other exposed dirt land, the more frequently you’ll need to backwash. This is true if you live near an alley too. Unless it’s paved, the traffic will put big clouds of dust in the air which can settle in your pool. If you have an alley behind your house, I recommend frequent backwashing every 1 to 2 weeks.

Keeping a sand filter too clean can also be a problem. Dirt traps dirt and a slightly dirty sand filter traps dirt faster than a newly cleaned one. Keep your filter clean! By all means, be aware that cloudiness can be cleared more quickly with a day or two’s buildup in your filter than it can if you backwash every day.

It depends a lot on the filter pump configuration how long it will take to clear water. A big and strong pump may move water too fast through a sand filter. That way, the particles that would be stopped at a low speed can just blow right through the sand.

I generally don’t use a clarifier. I find that the benefits are usually slim and not worth the cost. Additionally, in a sand filter, excessive clarifier use can compact the sand. I’ve taken all the sand out of a filter in chunks. I literally grabbed handfuls of sand, hard like rocks, and emptied a whole filter like that.

When you backwash clean your filter, the water doesn’t have to be perfectly clear. In a sand filter, that will take a very long time as sand keeps being stirred by the water the whole time it’s on backwash. That means it’s going to keep some of the dirt if you backwash properly not much, but a tiny bit. It’ll trap dirt better that way, so this may be an advantage.

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