Leslie’s sells a nifty gadget called a “debris shield” that does a nice job of protecting your swimming pool filter from floating crud, cuts down on the backwashing jobs, and staves off the day that you’ll have pay someone to take the filter apart and clean it out. It’s extremely simple: a stretchy nylon mesh bag that fits down inside the plastic skimmer basket. And for what it is, it’s stupidly pricey: $12.49! For this package of five, that would be $2.50 apiece.
Though you can rinse them out, they don’t last very long. If you live in a place like Arizona, where high summer winds blow dirt and leaves into the pool all summer, or if you have a dog that likes to swim, you need a finer filter than just the skimmer basket.
The other day, M’hijito wanted to bring Charley the Golden Retriever over for a dip in the drink. Meanwhile, Cassie the Corgi has taken to falling in the pool during her frenzies over the humans’ swimming activities. Cassie has more loose hair on her 25-pound body than Charley has over his entire 70-pound expanse, and Charley alone will leave a skiff of hair floating on the surface. Fresh out of debris shields and unable to afford a new one just then, I cast about…and found this:
Nylon hose ($1.24). Yea verily, an investment of a dollar and twenty-four cents will get you not one, not two, but five very effective debris shields. Here’s the trick:
Get the cheapest pair of pantyhose you can find. These came from Walgreen’s, where I paid a buck and a quarter for one “queen-size” pair. Take a pair of scissors and cut off the bottom part of the legs, about halfway up.
Now you have two debris shields.
Next, cut off the remaining length of the legs, just above the line where the reinforced panty part ends—this is right at the crotch. Don’t include the crotch seam in either of these two lengths.
Tie a knot to close one end of each of the second two lengths of hose you’ve cut off. Lo! This creates two more debris shields. The second set ends up with a tight, stretchy reinforced segment at the top.
Take the panty section and tie a knot at the bottom, where you cut off the legs. Presto-digito! Another debris shield. Two pair of hose gave me ten DIY debris shields.
Drop the knotted or toe end into the filter basket. Stretch the top over the rim—it should fit firmly. And there you are: exactly the same thing as Leslie’s $2.50 (plus tax) mesh debris filter, only you’ve paid 25 cents for it.
This works very effectively, and you can rinse it out and reuse it quite a few times. Check out the wad of dog hair the thing kept out of the pool’s filter!
After this heroic save, I simply washed the bag out and put it back into the skimmer basket, where it kindly grabbed a fistful of small, filter-clogging leaves the next time the wind blew:
Works perfectly. And it’s cheap. Very, very cheap.
How long did it take to collect all that dog hair?? No wonder you need to clean the filter. Yikes.
Ingenious solution, btw.
@ Remy: about a half-hour or forty minutes. That’s from one Charley Dip in the Pool session.
And it’s as nothing compared from the pounds of debris the now-defunct Devil Pod Tree used to dump in there.
Good idea–but I still hate that pool!
@ frugalscholar: 😀 Now that the Devil-Pod Tree is gone, I love the pool. Without the bushels of leaves, pods, and sticks, it’s quite easy to care for and hasn’t cost much to maintain.
We’ve had a particularly oppressive summer this year, day after day after day of record temps, humidity, and dirt in the air. The pool has been a godsend in this weather. And it’s been my main source of exercise — between a flare-up of plantar fascitis that makes it difficult to even limp to the refrigerator and the unholy heat, walking has been out of the question. About the best I’m doing is ten laps of the pool, not terrific but a great deal better than nothing.