Air Leak In Pool Filter?

[Budfudder]

We just got a new filter installed - a Waterway Crystal Water 525. It seems that there might be a leak somewhere:

• the pressure gauge on the filter never gets off zero.

• when I activate the air bleeder valve, it always has air to bleed - it'll push air for up to several minutes before it starts spewing water. Once it does spew water and I close it...in half an hour it will have air in it to bleed again.

• when I opened it up to clean the filters, they were all filthy (as expected) but only from about half way down. The top half of all of them was almost pristine. It was as if the filter had never been more than half way full, so only the submerged part of the filters had actually been doing any filtering.

I contacted the bloke who installed it for us - and he told me that all of the above was perfectly normal (obviously, he doesn't want to say there's something wrong with anything he did). But he suggested that there could be a leak somewhere in the pipes on the suction (rather than the filter) side.

I would have thought that once it was up and going, the filter would always be full of water - but in our case, at least, that doesn't appear so.

So is this normal? Or is it something I need to address? And if so, how?

[waterbear]

Sounds like a suction side leak to me. Classic description in fact.

Not normal and something you need to address.

Most common places for a suction leak are the skimmer and the suction side of the pump. Most common way to test is with smoke (incense works well) to see if it's being sucked in at the pipe joints. Best bet is have a professional leak detection company check the pool plumbing since they have specialized equipment to do so.  

Good luck!

[jr pool]

Did you see air bubbles entering the pump?