Pool filter sand

[carey]

Oh, I totally forgot a major thing, lol, I always alwasy rinse my pool filter sand. There is some really nasty crap in it. a film will on the top of the water bucket I use for rinsing. Really gross.

 

[Gregcoyote]

Some of the soluble material dissolves very slowly. Iron can easily be in the mix and it doesn't rinse out. Take a magnet to the sand to see if it's loaded or not.


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[BillD]

I guess the point is you need to use pure Quartz sand to not only avoid excess silica fines, but more important IMO it's the other soluble garbage it might have in it. Kind of like using tap water, most of its pure H20, but what's not can ruin your day.


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Excess fines come out in the wash. Silica fines won't dissolve. As to metal, bits, they could be from the crushing process. If you want to see lots of iron, run a magnet through play sand.

 

[Mebbid]

Excess fines come out in the wash. Silica fines won't dissolve. As to metal, bits, they could be from the crushing process. If you want to see lots of iron, run a magnet through play sand.

From the link I posted

In the first experiment I took 3 cups of sand, and suspended it in 3 gallons of freshly made Instant Ocean salt mix that initially contained less than 0.8 mM of silica (0.05 ppm SiO2). After 48 hours of gentle stirring with a powerhead (the water was stirring, but not the sand), the silica concentration had risen to 17 mM (1.0 ppm SiO2).

I then rinsed the same sand 5 times with 1 gallon RO/DI water (1 minute each time), discarded the contents, and then ran the same stirring experiment with 2 new gallons of Instant Ocean salt mix. In 48 hours the silica concentration had again risen, this time to 15 mM (0.92 ppm SiO2). Then I let it sit unstirred for another 96 hours, and the concentration had risen more, to 23 mM (1.4 ppm SiO2).