Ascorbic Treatment to rid Pool of metal stains

[mbar]

Here are the directions to use Ascorbic acid to rid your pool of metal stains:

Here is the ascorbic treatment:

Take your chlorine down to 0 and PH down to 7.2, if there is chlorine in the water it won't hurt, it will just eat up the ascorbic acid, so you will need more to get rid of the stains. You can add poyquat 60 per directions on the bottle to avoid getting algae while the chlorine is low.
You will need about a half to one pound of ascorbic acid per 10,000 gal. I like to go lighter on it and see if all the stains lift off before adding more.

Put the filter on circulate.
Use a cup and go around the perimeter of the pool and drop it down the sides as you go.
Let the ascorbic acid circulate for 1/2 hour. You will be amazed how the stain just disappears before your eyes.

If the stain is not all gone, leave the filter in circulate and add more ascorbic acid close to where you still see stain. Leave it in circulate until all of the stain is gone. (add more ascorbic acid if it circulates for 1/2 hour and there is still stain)

When the stain is gone, add enough sequestering agent for the volume of your pool - more is better than not enough.

Put the filter back on filter and leave it on 24/7.

The ascorbic acid will bring your ph down, and sometimes the alkalinity. After 24 hours you can start to rebalance the water. Bring up your ph and alkalinity, - use arm and hammer washing soda first, it will raise both ph and alk. Make sure you test in between, because you don't want your ph to go any higher than 7.2. If your alkalinity is in range, and you still need to raise your ph, use Borax to take it up to no higher than 7.2. You can start to bring up your chlorine. You want to do this slowly. It will take a lot of chlorine - I prefer to use bleach only at this time, and try to take it up to your minimum chlorine for your cya according to the Chlorine / CYA Chart - Trouble Free Pool. As you slowly raise the chlorine, watch for stains starting to form. If you see stains, make sure the ph is no higher than 7.2, and add more sequestering agent. You should see the stain lift in a couple of hours. Do not shock! Do not shock for at least 2 weeks! Make sure you keep your ph low for (7.2) for a week or two - it won't be hard because the ascorbic acid and sequestering agent will help it stay low. Once your chlorine starts to hold, it means that you have used up the ascorbic acid in the water and it will be easy to rebalance the pool back to your regular parameters.

Here are two important notes: High ph along with high chlorine will precipitate any metals that are not sequestered out of the water and on to the surface of the pool again. If this happens take the ph back down to 7, or 7.2 and add more sequestering agent. This should lift the stain off. You can add polyquat 60 to the water before starting the stain treatment to avoid getting algae while the chlorine is low.

Here are two links to buy ascorbic acid:

Storefront : PC NetwoRx Inc.

http://www.chemistrystore.com/Chemicals ... _Acid.html

Since they have really raised the price on Ascorbic acid I tried Citric acid and it worked.Here is a link to citric acid which is cheaper. You will have to use more, and it takes a little longer but it works

http://www.chemistrystore.com/search.cg ... earch2.y=0

 

[pairadocs]

questions on AA process

do i need to mix the AA with pool water in a big bucket prior to pouring?

I don't have to boil it do I?

What is the sequestering agent you mention? there are so many out there, i'm not sure which. I've been battling scale currently, and have Jacks magic blue stuff in the pool already - since that is a seq. agent, will that inhibit the process at all?

thanks

 

[tacoma5050]

I have major vinyl liner staining from the rust in my pool heaters cast iron headers and I have positive results from the vitamin C test and will be proceeding with these instructions:
www DOT troublefreepool DOT com/sticky.php?s=2298

Part of the instructions specfiy to followup with a sequestering agent. There are a confusing amount of brands and types of sequestering agents available online and at my local pool store. Can someone recomend a good type or brand to use for my situation.

Thanks !!

 

[riverheightsnancy]

Hi Mbar, Do you have a preferred product that turns the metal into crystals that can be vac'ed out? I remember seeing it mentioned here before, but I want to be sure which one it was. I will say this, that the ascorbic acid treatment worked wonders on my old concrete pool. But I got a very nasty algae bloom after and I would remind others to be very slow and measured on bringing the chlorine back up. I have used Jack's Blue before, but I think I now want to remove the metals completely after they are sequestered. I seem to get staining back and I want to try another product if you have any recommendations.

 

[mbar]

I'm sorry to say that I have not yet found a product that will get the metals to a point to be filtered out of the water. The one I tried last year was called Metal Magic by Proteam. I said it would turn metals into salt, so that they can be filtered out. I used it all last summer and still had metals. I keep looking, and if anyone hears of any please let me know . One thing you can do while doing the ascorbic acid treatment is to put in an algaecide. This will help keep algae from starting before you can start to bring up the chlorine. I am going to try running my pool with a higher cya this year. I want to see if I get less staining. It seemed last year as the cya went up, the stains stayed away more. I have been trying all kinds of "experiments" for the last 5 years . Maybe one day I will be able to post a more definite plan, like the plan for getting rid of the stains - the ascorbic acid treatment :!: Just to let you know though, I will get those stains to stay away someday :-D

 

[riverheightsnancy]

Hi Mbar, Yeah, we talked extensively last year about this and I did use the PolyQuat 60 as directed. In hindsight, I think that I should have tripled the doses just to be safe. I have about a 30,000 gallon pool (+ or -), and I think it is better to be safe than sorry, as I most certainly was! :? The weird thing with my pool this year, is we had a substantial loss of water over the winter. Approximately 50% of the water had to be replaced due to a tiny leak in the solid cover which our Little Giant was happily pumping away! We needed to do that anyway, because our CYA was very high in the 100-120 range and making chlorine stability difficult and possibly causing issues with the need to have the chlorine at shock levels practically all the time.

I personally would be careful about raising your CYA too high. Because my experience shows that it did NOT keep my stains away. I think that there is a really tenuous balance between the Alk and PH that is an issue with the stains. My pool's fill is high in Calcium and is on the hard side. I am experimenting with adding some salt to the water for the improved "feel" of it. I am promising myself not to freak out about the stains like I did last year. Another thing is, I have stripes in the staining in the pool. About the last 2 feet from the top has stain all the way around. Below that is substantially lighter and much less stain. (this is the level the water dropped down below) So it is still a mystery. I have another bottle of Jack's Blue, I can't remember if I used Blue or Pink last year. Jack's has introduced some new products and I am unsure now what is the best product for my pool, seeing as it is concrete, painted. Maybe, between the two of us and others, we can get this stain thing resolved! My husband thinks that if we re-paint the pool that the stain issue will go away. That is his theory as the paint has chips here and there and concrete is exposed here and there.

 

[chem geek]

So I'm going to be trying this Ascorbic Acid treatment later this month just before closing the pool to get rid of some metal stains that I'm fairly certain are iron. Some are up to 4 years old, so they may not come out so quickly, but we'll see.

I calculated that the one pound of Ascorbic Acid per 10,000 gallons would take almost 5 ppm FC to get rid of (assuming a minimal amount of Ascorbic Acid gets oxidized by the iron) so that's not so very much chlorine to get things back to normal.

I'll let you know how things turn out with my "old" stains -- created from my first year and a half of pool ownership when I used Trichlor pucks in a floating feeder that sometimes "parked" itself near stainless steel bars I have in the pool and rusted the nearby mounts.

I'm curious as to why one doesn't add metal sequestrant before the ascorbic acid. I would think one would want the sequestrant there to capture the metal as it gets reduced and goes into solution. I suppose that the lower pH from the acid is enough to prevent it from falling out of solution again, but would having the sequestrant in the water first be a problem?

Richard

 

[Guest]

I would think the main reason would be so that the calcium and magnesium in the water is not sequestered first leaving less sequesterant available for the newly reduced metal ions in the water.

 

[Hawaii-Z]

Hello all - this is my first post on the site. I did a lot of research on the pool forum site and found the link to here.

I am in the process of doing the ascorbic acid treatment because of my earlier mistake of using a copper based algecide in a white plaster pool. That was only one of several beginner mistakes I have made. The copper staining (blue) started to become very pronounced over the last 6 months and I didn't want to go back to the pool store for help - always too much money going to the pool store.

I first tested with some vitamin-C tablets to see if the treatment was for my case. The tablets turned the plaster black in a 6 in circle on one of my steps. I thought "omg, what did I do now" and walked back into the house. About 30 min later I brought my wife out to look at what I did to the pool and was shocked at what the spot looked like. It was the whitest and cleanest 6 in circle in the whole pool. My pool is 40,000 gallons, so I ordered 6 lbs of acid from the chemistry store. Got the PH down to 7.1 and FC to 1 and added in the 6 lbs. Not much happened, so I waited 30 min and then put the filter back online and put in 4 qts of metal and stain out. The next morning I noticed some improvement in the color of the stains and so I went to the vitamin store and picked up some more acid (the price was actually cheaper than the chemistry store). I added another 6 lbs at night about 24 hours after the first 6 lbs. This morning the pool looked even better, but it was dark outside and the pool light didn't help much. I plan to get another 2 qts of metal and stain out on the way home today.

I will start raising PH tonight since I went down to 6.9-7.0 with all the ascorbic acid I added. I'm not too worried about the zero FC level since there is probably a lot of copper still in the water and it's relatively cold here right now (70 degrees - sorry mainland people).

On a side note - The treatment has taken care of another problem I had. Another beginner mistake I made was to let CYA get way too high (150). Last night CYA was 60.

The pool:
20' x 40' with a 9' deep end.
White plaster
SWG
Solar panel heating

/z

 

[budster]

Many of my customers have had success with AA Rx. As ProTeam continues to state that it's Metal Magic will "crystalize" the metals to be filtered out, AND since it seems to be, at the least, an effective sequesterant, I'll continue to take the chance that it will remove some metals, and help with stain removal. Like they say -- "it couldn't hurt".

 

[akenis]

The initial dose had a dramatic effect. Still had some streaks on the sides, and blotchy brown spots on the bottom of the pool.

Added a second 1/2 lb per 10K gallons, and some minor improvements, but still left with streaking on the sides, and blotches on the bottom.

Went ahead and added a full initial dose of Jacks Purple stuff, and a 3rd dose of 1/2 lb per 10K gal of ascorbic acid. Pump is circulating...

It is amazing to watch the stain lift when you can directly apply the acid. It just doesn't seem like the A acid is getting to the trouble areas remaining.

Should I wait more than 1/2 hour and see what happens? Any problems w/ adding a 4th dose of A Acid?... that would be a total of 2 lb/10K gallons.

 

[mbar]

You can put your filter on recirculate and let it just circulate overnight. See how it looks in the morning - if it isn't all gone, add more acid. Let us know how you do :-D

 

[akenis]

I was worried about PH and TA getting too low, so I tested. PH only dropped to about 7.2 and TA was still hanging around 70. So no worry there...

 

[akenis]

It was a lot better in the morning. I went ahead w/ the last dose, applied in troublesome areas with an old sock. Circulating for another day, and then rebalance...

 

[mbar]

Sounds good! Sometimes the stains are stubborn and you need a little more. The fact that your ph didn't go too low is a sign that you needed more acid in the water, but sometimes it takes a little time to get the ph low, therefore the waiting a day before you add more ascorbic acid. The low acid levels help remove the stains. If you ever see stain coming back, you lower the ph back down to 7.0 and add sequestering agent.

 

[pool_hokie]

Has anyone tried citric acid instead of ascorbic acid, as suggested in the original post of this thread?

It's much, much cheaper. But, if it's a lot slower - meaning your chlorine is low that much longer, maybe the extra cost is worth it?

 

[snoopy55]

If your pump can only filter, meaning you can't just circulate and bypass the filtering process then is it okay to pump and filter when you initially put the A acid in? Is there another way to bypass the filter? I'm guessing you don't want the filter to initially stop the A acid process is the reason you want to circulate first after putting the acid in?????

 

[Guest]

If your pump can only filter, meaning you can't just circulate and bypass the filtering process then is it okay to pump and filter when you initially put the A acid in? Is there another way to bypass the filter? I'm guessing you don't want the filter to initially stop the A acid process is the reason you want to circulate first after putting the acid in?????

Yes, it's fine. Cartridge filters and some DE filters cannot be set to backwash or circulate so you just filter normally, It will have mo real impact on the process. The only reason to set a filter that has a multiport valve to recirculate is to avoid the sand, which might have a lot of metal staining in it and it would deplete the ascorbic acid. This is not a problem with DE and Carts.

 

[Guest]

Has anyone tried citric acid instead of ascorbic acid, as suggested in the original post of this thread?

It's much, much cheaper. But, if it's a lot slower - meaning your chlorine is low that much longer, maybe the extra cost is worth it?

Citric acid works fine. It didn't seem to be quite as effective as ascorbic acid when I tried it and might need a full 48 hour to work but it does work just fine. I really saw no difference with the chlorine demand. Both about the same here.

 

[gtowntxguy]

Mbar.....are you stating to run the pump for 24hrs for 7 days then begin the process of balancing the water?