garden hose iron filters

Jump to latest Follow Reply
B

bkfamily1

0
LifeTime Supporter
Jul 8, 2013
197
North Canton, OH
I plan to purchase a filter to place on my garden hose this year to help keep the iron (and other things) down in the pool. I do not have a bunch of iron in my water, but I have seen light staining if I leave the hose running and sitting close to the steps or the bottom for a long time.

I have seen three brands out there - Pre Fresh, Pure Fill and ecoone. They all appear to have both activated carbon and a redox resin. Pre Fresh says it is good for 5000 to 8000 gallons and a flow rate of 2.5 gpm and costs about $30. Pure Fill says it is good for 1200 gallons, does not mention flow rate and costs about $15. The ecoone says it is good for 40,000 gallons, does not mention flow rate and costs about $33.

Has anyone used any of these? Any feedback?

Thanks
 
Generally, all are too small to have much affect on a pool....particularly a 30k pool. I would have the pool water and fill water tested for iron to see how much you really have.

You can probably control the staining by controlling your pH far better than any filter will ever do.
 
Dave, thanks for the feedback. FYI, although I drain my pool every fall to close, it is always full again by spring from melting snow and rain. So I really do not need to "fill" the pool to open. I was just thinking to keep the iron from climbing as I top off the pool over and over during the year. I would also like to eliminate the "rusty brown" spot that forms every once in a while right in front of the hose if I throw the hose in and leave it laying right on a step or the bottom running for a long time.

When I ordered reagents for this year recently, I ordered an iron kit, so I can test to see what I have. I am on a well. The house originally had a whole-house iron filter in line before the softener. But when I bought the house, it was dead as was the softener. They had been leaking long term and the controls were all rusted and destroyed. The water guy that installed the original filter and softener said I no longer needed the iron filter. He said that wells can have higher iron levels when first drilled, but that the iron can go down over years as sediment collects around the well and it becomes "self-filtering." So the iron filter was not replaced although the softener was. I have both hard and soft water spigots at the pool. I alternate between them for fill during the year based on my hardness.

What is an OK iron level?

What pH will prevent iron staining?

Thanks
 
so I checked all the water points

pool 0
soft water 0
well water 0.2 or less

probably, I do not need to worry about it at all

I think the tinting I got last year honestly was (without going into the whole long story) from dissolving some copper out of the heater coils due to low pH - I think that is all out of the pool water now (also tested the pool water for copper and got 0)

so whether the slight stain I get if I let the fill hose run a long time while pointing at and close to the stairs or liner is sediment or iron, I do not know - but I think I will get one of those hose end filters and try it this year - it may not really be necessary, but they are not very costly, and it can't hurt - and I am not going to use it to fill the pool which is already full from melting snow and rain - I will just use it when topping off
 
Dave, after testing my water, I am betting you are right. I usually lay the hose in the pool where it is far from the bottom and does not cause any discoloration. But I am unfortunately not the only one that puts it in. And they are not as disciplined (anal my wife would say) as I am LOL.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
BK, I do use the prefresh filter on my hottub in the winter when I am drawing partial well water from the nearest shop faucet....(the hot water is softened)
While its not a whole pool solution in terms of iron, my experience suggests it keeps a good deal of it out...when I don't use it on the hot tub, the water tints.

I also use it on the pool, as my softened water is still at about .5 for iron.

The prefresh will nail the sediment whether its iron or otherwise, and IME if you're on well, you ay find its also nice to wash the car with ;) So if you're planning to try one anyway, I can say I've had good luck with the PreFresh.
 
My well is approximately 4 years old now. When I moved in we had an iron / silt issue and hard water. The water clarity looked okay in a glass but if a white tub was filled you could see the brown haze in the color and it left a ring at the water line. Long story short we had a whole house water filter and softener put in but it did not cover the outside hoses due to not wanting to waste softened water outside. This took care of the inside issues completely and I just change the whole house filter out once per year. Last year I had a pool installed and I researched filtering the fill water. The initial fill I had trucked in but I knew I would be topping up the pool occasionally from the well and did not want to put any iron into it. I researched all the options you listed. They had some mixed reviews and the biggest draw back I saw was the flow rate of 2 gpm which is not very good since my hose can easily put out 10 gpm and it would take forever to top up at a 2 gpm flow rate. I ended up getting two " big blue" filter housings from Amazon for $40 each and piping them in series. I have in the first one a 5 micron filter good for 10 gpm that cost $12 and in the second one I have a 0.5 micron filter good for 10 gpm that cost $20. I have the setup so it crews on the end of my garden hose before the water goes into the pool. After topping up I simply remove the filters and dry them out in the sun to avoid any kind of mildew growth from wetness. I have put thousands of gallons into my pool in this manner and have not had a single issue with iron or silt. When I take the filter apart after filling the 5 micron filter is brown in color and the 0.5 micron filter has a very light brown appearance, hard to see but there. I am very happy with this set-up and it seems to work well for my application. Considering these are whole house filters they should easily last me 5-10 years between replacements with just topping up the water. For me it is certainly peace of mind and probably the best $120 I have spent considering how much more could be spent if the metal got in the pool.
 
Filtering visible iron does not necessarily remove iron from your pool. In fact, a normal pool filter is very likely capable of filtering out visible iron.

The iron that causes most of our pool issues is iron in soluble form and passes right through mechanical filtration. Then, a combination of conditions can occur in your pool that allows that soluble iron to precipitate out onto your pool surfaces and it bonds tightly to those surfaces.........making removable quite difficult.

So, sacul19, what you are seeing removed is visible iron particles. Whether or not soluble iron still exists in your pool water can only be determined by testing chemically - not visible observation.

It is quite possible because your water is tinted (assuming from iron) that it has already precipitated and there is little to no soluble iron left in your pool.

The takeaway is that filtering visible iron is really pretty easy and can be done mechanically. Soluble iron is not so easy and, generally speaking, will pass through any attempts at mechanical filtration.

Sequestrants keep iron in soluble form - preventing them from precipitating on your pool surface - but the iron is still there.

R/O treatments actually remove the soluble iron but they do so chemically - not through mechanical filtration
 
Well, I hardly had this posted an hour and must make a correction. R/O treatment is apparently not a chemical process but is mechanical.

I don't want to hijack the thread so let's leave it at that for now.

Someone with more knowledge than I should start a thread.....Reverse Osmosis - How does it work? I will be interested in learning more.
 
Hi Dave. I have r/o in my studio for drinking water and the maintenance guy as given me a hard time for putting too much iron through it, which fouls the filters and membrane and which I am as a result constantly replacing. R/O in general works on mechanical filters and a membrane...so the setup that saucil recommended to BK ...larger micon down to smaller micron, is actually similar to r/o and a sound approach to mitigation to some degree. Except a r/o membrane filters down to .0001 microns and will even fiter out pathogens/bacteria etc.

As it turns out, most residential r/o units can't handle more than .3 ppm iron...and my raw well water is 2 ppm. Hope that helps.
 

Enjoying this content?

Support TFP with a donation.

Give Support
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread Status
Hello , This thread has been inactive for over 60 days. New postings here are unlikely to be seen or responded to by other members. For better visibility, consider Starting A New Thread.
Top Bottom
Back
Jump to latest Follow Reply