Advice on where to start with pool stains

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pharpe

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Feb 10, 2014
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Dallas, TX
I have some staining on my plaster and I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with it. There are two types. The first is a light brown on the steps and a patch on the bottom. To me it looks like it’s just dirty and I thought a brush and vacuum would clean that up. However, when I tried brushing these areas pretty hard, it had no effect at all. The other stain appears to be rust under the light fixture. Again, I tried brushing and it had no effect.

Remedies I have read include: rubbing the stains with vitamin C, rubbing stains with triclor pucks, SLAMing the pool and no drain acid wash.

Is there a preferred methodology on when to apply these treatments? Is there something else I should try?
 
First you need to ID the type of stain. Try the Vitamin C and the trichlor on each stain and see if they fade with one or the other.

After that, then you can come up with a remedy plan.
 
If this does work, you may want to do a Hydrogen Peroxide / Ascrobic Acid treatment while the water is still cold as one key to this is to remove all chlorine from the water before starting on the treatment. (a side benefit to using the Hydrogen Peroxide is it will also eliminate remaining chlorine as well as help lift the stain). I did this over the winter as I had some rust stains on my vinyl liner (from rust getting into the pool while the metal roof was replaced last year), within an hour of initial treatment stains were lighter, but most of them came up when my robot cleaner went over the area next, my guess is it also helped release the stain from the liner, but did not completely dissolve it.

In my case I used about 1.5 gallons of 3% Hydrogen peroxide (bought out the local dollar store at $.39 per quart) and about 5 pounds of food grade ascorbic acid (from ebay).

Ike
 
Triclor pucks did not seem to do anything to either type of stain. Vit C was able to remove the light brown "dirt" looking stains. The darker orange rust looking stains are starting to show up in more places. I also saw the my CC is up to 1 so I started the SLAM process this morning. Been keeping my FC above 20 (CYA at 50). No impact on the stains so far.
 
Any suggestions? I've been SLAMing for 2 days now with no effect. Here is what the spots look like.
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If the trichlor tablet had no effect, then SLAM level FC levels will not either.
Sounds like the vitamin C was helping some. With the few spots, you may want to get aggressive by hand with the Vitamin C.
 
If you haven't already, try leaving a vitamin C tablet directly on one of the orange stains until it dissolves on it's own and see if that does anything.

Tan and orange are both colors that tend to be iron stains, and vitamin C is expected to work on both of them. The orange stains likely contain more iron, and so would be expected to take more vitamin c and more time.
 

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JasonLion said:
If you haven't already, try leaving a vitamin C tablet directly on one of the orange stains until it dissolves on it's own and see if that does anything.

Tan and orange are both colors that tend to be iron stains, and vitamin C is expected to work on both of them. The orange stains likely contain more iron, and so would be expected to take more vitamin c and more time.
Click to expand...

Dissolving the tablet faded the stain slightly but did not remove it. Do I just keep putting more vitamin C on them? They are showing up all over the pool.
 
One thing that may be causing it. The clip on my pool light fixture broke off so I fixed it with an old L bracket I had. It was just plain steal so it's probably rusting. Could that be causing these spots all over the pool?
 
Yes it could be the cause, there might also be iron in your fill water.

The first step is to ID the stains, which are sounding more and more like iron stains. The second step is to do an AA treatment to remove the stains, after which you are going to need to use sequestrant to keep them removed.
 
JasonLion said:
Yes it could be the cause, there might also be iron in your fill water.

The first step is to ID the stains, which are sounding more and more like iron stains. The second step is to do an AA treatment to remove the stains, after which you are going to need to use sequestrant to keep them removed.
Click to expand...

After being gone 2 weeks I now have a week at home to work on this. I pulled the light and the rust was definitely coming from that. I've been reading up on AA treatments and found a thread about using HP with the AA method
http://www.troublefreepool.com/thre...-in-pool-water?p=606590&viewfull=1#post606590

Was wondering if I should go that route or just the traditional AA method. Any thoughts?
 
I used a combination of H2O2 and AA on my treatment, although not nearly as much H2O2 as that message thread suggested, personally I see it as a bonus item, you want to make sure to start with no FC and H2O2 will quickly remove any FC and any excess of H2O2 will help the process before adding the AA. In my case it worked, but was slow and I did not add any FC back into the water until the next day, if I had to do it over I would probably use more H2O2.

Ike
 
Last night I did the HP with AA treatment exactly as described in the thread I posted above. Wow was that pricey. It cleaned up about 80-90% of the rust stain under the light. There are still some yellow/orange spots on the steps at the other side. Should I do another full AA treatment tonight or is there a way to spot treat the remaining area?
 
I already added back the chlorine an hour ago. The instructions made it sound like I'd get algae if I let it go past sun up. I actually sleep a little late, freaked out and ran down stairs to dump in the bleach. I will try brushing.
 
Having trouble getting the FC up. Per the instructions I calculated that I would need 1936 oz (~16 121 oz bottles) of 8.25 % bleach to raise the FC to 10. I've already added 20 bottles and had my Stenner pump going on max for the last 3 hours. (10 gal per day rate) I've only now just gotten the FC to register on the test and it's currently at 2 PPM. I just added 2 more 121 oz bottles of bleach which brings my total to 2662 oz of 8.25 % plus about 160 oz of 6% from the Stenner. That's almost 50% more then I was expecting. Does this sound right?

Also my ph looks really low. It's yellow color that is lighter than even the lowest on the scale. (7.0) Should I try to adjust that up or just wait and get my FC right?

Edit: After the last two 121 oz bottles FC now is at 7.5 PPM
 

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