Zeo, Inc ZeoSand-50 ZeoSand Swimming Pool Sand Replacement, Alternative Filter Media, 50 P, White

Was kinda doubting this product because of the mixed reviews but I decided to risk it and buy this instead of regular sand to open my pool up this summer. It was the best decision I ever made. Just like the many other reviews say make sure to prewash your sand before adding it to the filter because it truly does make a difference and helps the pool water as soon as it is added to the filter. I pre washed the sand for a good 40 minutes and made sure I got as much of the dirt that I could out. I took samples of the water to see the progress and once I was happy with how it looked I added it to the filter and it worked its magic. Along with this I used baking soda and chlorine tablets and pool clarifier. And of course have been shocking my pool every once in a while when it needs it. Last summer can’t even compare to how well the pool looks this summer just make sure to backwash the pool and rinse before filtering it. Make sure everything looks good and you will have the clearest pool ever. Absolutely love this product.

Update: Bumped this up to 5 stars because I realized that pre-washing this stuff in a bucket was no big deal given the fact that I spend A LOT less time, and less money on chemicals, maintaining the pool now because of it. I still wish the company would rinse it before packaging it, but it works so much better than regular sand I don't care now. My pool looks phenomenal two months later and I haven't had to put much chemicals in to keep it balanced. Once you initially get the salt, chlorine, chlorine stabilizer, and pH at the correct levels, there isn't much to do except add a bag of shock every few weeks depending on use. We have had an absolute deluge this year of rain and it didn't affect the water clarity at all.Ignore the haters. They just didn't do the prep work I originally noted below.This product would absolutely get 5 stars if it wasn’t for the fact that the customer has to clean it. Once you do clean it though, it works well.I used the bucket method, that several other customers commented about, to clean the sand. I dumped one zeo sand bag at a time into the bucket and “washed” it using a high nozzle speed and a hose. I drained off the dirty water and repeated this about 7 times. I have slightly more than half of the filter filled with zeo sand. This picture is from DAY ONE after running the filter overnight for about 10 hours and a little extra backwashing and rinsing. Hopefully it works as well as other customers and I don’t have to use as much chlorine and chemicals.

UPDATE-- I'm now at 2.5 years. Great product! I definitely use less chemicals, and the pool needs less maintenance than it did before I started using the zeosand. I'm not even using pure zeosand, I'm using a mixture of sand and zeosand. This is better than having a cartridge filter that needs to be cleaned regularly.Apparently you can "refresh" zeosand with a salt mixture of 0.8 lb. of salt per gallon of water. The directions are on their website. According to the website:"Renew filtration efficiency and refresh ZeoSand’s chloramine control with a salt water rinse. ZeoSand will need to be refreshed when the chloramine odor (combined chlorine) begins to increase. Typically, the home pool needs to be refreshed every two years. Commercial pools, due to the increased bather load, must be refreshed more often."UPDATE-- took about a month for me to really see a difference, but this is an awesome product. It took about 2 weeks for the green tinge to completely go away. I don't think the light green color was caused by algae, when I brushed, there was never algae stuck to the walls, nor to the bottom of the pool. The water simply had a light green tinge to it. I think it's the product that does that, but eventually it goes away.After a year of having it in the filter using a combination of zeosand and regular sand (see below), I can say that I have been using about half of the chlorine I had used in the past. My pool hasn't turned green even after neglecting it (I use chlorine tabs and sometimes it's gone a few weeks with none, because I forgot to replenish the floater). The filtration level of this product is is superb, but for some reason it takes time. It took 2 weeks for the light green color to go away, and another 2 weeks to get crystal water, clearer than what you typically get from a sand filter. Also, I should mention that I have a variable speed Pentair pump and I run the pool at VERY low speed 24/7. That might make a difference in my experience with the product, since the water is always being filtered.ORIGINAL REVIEW - Given that many of the reviewers mentioned that after using the zeosand they either had an algae problem, or constantly had zeosand dust making its way into their pool, or the zeosand would filter out their chemicals, I decided to try something else. I have a 250 lb filter, instead of going with (5) 25lbs bags of zeo sand, I decided to use (3) 50 lbs of pool sand and top it with (1) 50 lbs of zeosand. I read that someone else did something similar and had great results.I backwashed and rinsed the pool sand twice. Then I added the 50 lbs of zeosand and backwashed it FIVE times. The strange thing is that up to the forth time there was still zeosand residue showing up in the filter's sight glass. I used over 1000 gallons backwashing, but it wasn't a problem because I had planned to put some fresh water in the pool. It's now been 3 days, my water is balanced but the water is still turbid with a green tinge. I shocked the pool with liquid chlorine and have been running the pump 24/4. It doesn't seem to be getting better. I might shock the water again. I want to give it a full week and see what happens. I'll update my review.