Fed Up With Metal Stains! Help Me!

[JenMichelle]

We moved into a house over the winter and inherited our pool. We LOVE it, thanks to this site! However, I am ABOUT TO PULL MY HAIR OUT over reoccurring metal stains. Everything has been perfect, except outrageously high CYA due to the old owners using pucks, and, these stupid stains that keep making my entire pool look dingy! I did a series of drain/refills and now my CYA is 50. I have had my tap water tested that I fill the pool up with and it came back 0 metals of any kind. I am on city water and I have even discussed this problem with several neighbors who have pools and they have never had this problem. I am sick of spending $75 bi-weekly at the gosh darn pool store just to brighten my pool back up. Anyway....here are my questions:

1) I have seen a few "waterbugs" in my pool, and I have heard this is usually a sign of algae. I am using a skimmer sock and change it twice a day but the last few days it has had green fuzzy stuff in it. Could this be algae? The pool is crystal clear, minus the dingy liner and stairs due to said stains

2) I haven't had to SLAM the pool yet, but should I do this just in case before my AA treatment and sequestrant since it's not recommended for a while after the treatment? I would hate for an algae bloom to happen and have to SLAM and ruin my AA treatment.

3) Can I SLAM, do my AA treatment, plus sequester the heck out of it, and then backwash and drain as much as I can? Since the metal is supposed to be sequestered, wouldn't that be the best time to get it all out of the pool? I don't care if I have to drain the whole darn thing at this point. I just want my pool to be bright and not dingy and have to deal with this every two weeks or so.

I have been using the granular ascorbic acid (2lbs) when doing my treatments, and adding a whole bottle of sequestrant about 30 min afterwards and the recommended maintenance doses. It is INSTANT beauty! It works perfectly, but the stains slowly creep back on my stairs and liner after about 2 weeks. When treating I do lower the ph and wait until Cl is 0, and I am slowly bringing back up those two over 3 or 4 days or so after the treatment.

Any input or help is greatly appreciated. I am at my wits end with this. I am listing my test results from this evening below.

CL 5
CC 0
TC 5
TA 130 I know this is high but was told not to worry about it unless Ph rising gets annoying, which it is starting to bug me.
Ph 7.8
Ca 50
Cya 50 or 55

Thanks guys! I don't know what I would do without this site!

 

[smforte]

Nothing to add but following your thread since I'm dealing with the same problem,. Good luck. I'm sure the experts will chime in soon. I think they are pretty swamped with questions

 

[duraleigh]

You are dealing with two seperate issues and intermingling them. Get your water crystal clear (a picture would be a big help) and then keep it there. Your numbers look pretty good right now but I would suggest you perform an OCLT to see if you have unseen organics (algae).

Once you have completely cleaned up your pool water issues, the stains will still be there but now you can do a stain treatment and get them removed.....just as you have done before.

As a final step, lower you TA down to around 80 or so and your pH down to around 7.4. If you can monitor CAREFULLY and keep those two parameters where suggested, I doubt your stains will return.

You have gotten sidetracked by lumping the issues into one problem and that is making the problem unclear to you.

Keep the FC issue (hazy, green fuzzy stuff, waterbugs) as one problem and then solve it.....the OCLT will tell you if you need to SLAM.

Repeating, then take the stain issue as a seperate problem and solve it as you have already been doing but this time lower your TA and pH and KEEP them lower

 

[JenMichelle]

Got it! I have been doing the OCLT for four nights in a row, I would lose .5 cl but no more. Maybe I'm paranoid!

 

[JenMichelle]

I did an OCLT test last night just to verify, and lost 0 Cl. I have muriatic acid to bring down my ph and TA. In what order should I do things? I was going to go ahead and add the acid to lower ph and TA now, and just wait for my cl to run out to 0, then add the AA treatment stuff followed by a sequestrant. Is this correct? I just cleaned and vacuumed really good and back washed and my water is crystal clear, except for the stains. My chlorine is right at 3 now.

 

[duraleigh]

Now, you will have to help me. I have never had the need for an AA treatment so am not so sure of the sequnce. I presume you begin to let your FDC dift towards zero and, while doing so, get a 60% polyquat algaecide in there for extra protection and then add the AA.

I am getting out of my league no so I would rather more knowledgeable folks than me chime in but you can start to let your FC drift down now, I'm sure.

Do you have everything on hand to do this treatment correctly? Since you have done it before successfully, I would assume so but just asking, nevertheless.

 

[JenMichelle]

Yep I have everything I need on hand, except for an algaecide, which I didn't use last time- I didn't know I was supposed to, and it was after my drain refills to lower cya and was pretty much fresh water anyway. Do you suggest any certain algaecide?
I wanted to get started on this tonight, but I will have to wait for some help! I wanted to let my chlorine drop tonight and start treatment tomorrow, but I guess I need an algaecide first, and I will wait to hear from some other members on what order to do things. In the meantime I guess I will add my chlorine I really want to kick the stains out and get them sequestered and then drain at least half of my pool to get them OUT! I can't deal with this all summer. Thanks for your reply!

 

[JenMichelle]

You can see the color difference above the water.

 

[JenMichelle]

UPDATE....

I did my AA treatment as I described above and back washed and rinsed the heck out of my filter when I was done. Then I drained down until I only had about 20 inches of water and I am almost done refilling. Also, for anyone following this thread I bought my Ascorbic Acid online here http://www.capnutra.com/vitamin-c.html, which is a 5lb resealable bag for right at $40 total, that includes shipping. It worked great! A 2lb bag at my pool store was $25 and it took the entire 2 lbs verses the 1lb it took for this treatment from CapNutra. Anyway.....

I thought maybe I had rusty screws under my caps for my rails so early this morning I pulled one off and ALL of the screws were terribly rusty, some to the point where I almost couldn't get them out. So I made a trip to Lowe's and picked up stainless steel screws and replaced what I could. Now that I have seen that I truly believe it is the culprit for my reoccurring metal stains. HOWEVER, the deck was built overlapping the railing and I could not get to 6 of the caps! Who does that? SO, hopefully by replacing the screws under the 10 I could get to will help. I am now wondering if there is some sort of spray sealant I can maybe wiggle through the cracks and spray on the ones I could not reach to help keep the rust from getting back in my pool. I am obsessed!