What I thought were old iron stains on my cartridge filters, is iron my water!

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I am catching up on this thread. I've been told my city water has lots of iron in it and I will have a vinyl pool. I was planning to do the polyfill method.

Is metal magic being used to get iron stains off the liner & equipment?
 
markayash said:
It may help them from forming but if you already have stains need to do a vitamin C treatment to lift them off. Then metal
Magic or a few others keep them from sticking. That’s my unscientific way of understanding
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Ohhh it's a sequestrant... got it. Thank you! If you keep your fc at slam level will the iron not stain and allow time for the polyfill to work?
 
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Day 12 and 13....
So things started clearing on day 12 and today I can SEE THE BOTTOM! It seems the crystalline entities all dropped out! For awhile it looked like a big bowl of milk & cereal with the constant dropping Oak flowers and leaves adding a corn flaky texture... Now I am back to lightly smoky looking water, I can see the sweep and lots of piles of white-ish dust on the bottom. Everything has a light dusting of powder on the horizontal surfaces.. making it looked like it got snowed on. Not sure if you can see it in the pics.
20210416_075804[1].jpg
I think you can make out the piles powdered sugar amongst the reflections below the sweep hose... I will remove the sweep for now so it doesn't get stirred up and I'll vac that up. .. to morrow is Saturday so I will have time to fuss with filters and such.

The other day I discovered that if my SWG knob is turned to "0" it is NOT OFF! The panel goes down to 6% per the diag button.. so its ALMOST off. hmm. No matter, I am still chlorinating the rest of the way with LC to 3-5FC. I have been careful not to run the FC too high. And finally the pH moved up a notch to 7.8... for almost two weeks it stayed at 7.5... finally feeling like I am not just wasting drops!

If I do this again, I am going to take measurements with a Secchi disk.. instead of a less quantitative measurement; "Can I see the pool sweep or can't I". Its the Oceanographer in me.
 
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Snoobug said:
Sorry I didn't mean to hijack this thread.
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You didn't hijack... all comments are welcome.. even about mixed drinks, birding and bowls of cereal if you so desire!

After going through this process here are some of my observations with respect to your questions: The AA does a better job of removing the iron staining from vinyl and plastic surfaces. I don't know if I had staining on my plaster because its harder to see it on dark plaster or if there is less affinity for iron to stain my kind of plaster. Once the AA gets the surface iron in solution, then the sequestrant binds with aqueous iron. But the iron is not removed from the water... it just stays bound to the sequestrant until it degrades and goes back into solution. So at this point you have three options to actually remove the iron.
1) once its bound with a seqaustrant, do a water exchange to remove the iron tainted water
2) try filtering the iron out with polyfil before doing the sequestrant
3) try Metal Magic which is supposed to act as a sequestrant AND create a cystallized compound so that (according to their product lit) it drops out of solution and can be vacced/filtered out.

I did option "3" and it looks like I am in the crystallization phase. I never did find a CalyHypo puck to try @JoyfulNoise 's suggestion from post 11
markayash said:
This is the " all about iron" thread :)
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There's a really bad chem joke in there somewhere: "Its all about the base, 'bout the base, No Iron..."🎶
 
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mguzzy said:
You didn't hijack... all comments are welcome.. even about mixed drinks, birding and bowls of cereal if you so desire!

After going through this process here are some of my observations with respect to your questions: The AA does a better job of removing the iron staining from vinyl and plastic surfaces. I don't know if I had staining on my plaster because its harder to see it on dark plaster or if there is less affinity for iron to stain my kind of plaster. Once the AA gets the surface iron in solution, then the sequestrant binds with aqueous iron. But the iron is not removed from the water... it just stays bound to the sequestrant until it degrades and goes back into solution. So at this point you have three options to actually remove the iron.
1) once its bound with a seqaustrant, do a water exchange to remove the iron tainted water
2) try filtering the iron out with polyfil before doing the sequestrant
3) try Metal Magic which is supposed to act as a sequestrant AND create a cystallized compound so that (according to their product lit) it drops out of solution and can be vacced/filtered out.

I did option "3" and it looks like I am in the crystallization phase. I never did find a CalyHypo puck to try @JoyfulNoise 's suggestion from post 11


There's a really bad chem joke in there somewhere: "Its all about the base, 'bout the base, No Iron..."🎶
Click to expand...
This is fantastic! I understand now between the 3! Much appreciated! ❤️
 
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Try to scoop up some of the powdery substance and let it dry out. Theres science to be done ....

funny GIF
 
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Day 14
The pool was pretty darn clear today.. all the piles of powder were on the bottom and steps. I tried to suck up some of the precipitate with a big syringe from the little piles on the top step and dumped it into a measuring cup and a couple of cylinders to let it settle out. I expect I will get more when I clean my filters tomorrow. I pulled out the old school bottom vac and hose and sucked up as much as I could and swept the rest up toward the main drain.. it just "poofed" up and now I am filtering again. But not near as bad as the cereal bowl of corn flakes and milk I had before. I drained the spa and then refilled it and the water in the spa is clear. So it looks like whatever the white powder is, its being filtered out.

The chem levels are boringly similar to the past days.. FC 5, pH 7.5 Alk 80, temp 61, and the filter pressure went up 2 lbs after the vac job. I think I am going bump the FC and fire up the SWG tomorrow after I clean the filters for no other reason than it will be 2 weeks.

So I think things have done whatever chemical thing they were going to do. and I'm just filtering out the flotsam and jetsam. I don't think I caught anything in the polyfil (other than tree snot) because whatever would have been filtered was sequestered by the MM. I think this took longer than @setsailsoon 's process because my pool was so cold. I had to warm it up everyday to get it to 65. But I think that suppressed the bio activity enough that I didn't have to use any polyquat.

Some pics:
20210417_112255[1].jpg
Piles of powder on the bottom (above the hose):
20210417_112311[1].jpg
My attempt at showing the crystal powder on the top step of the spa.. see where I vacked it? sorry for the reflection.
20210417_114112[1].jpg
 
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2 days later we can see the robot and floor much clearer. I’m seeing quite the difference between here and post #46, definitely improving over 2 days. Probably hard to see in person tho so hang in there.
 
After wiping the sleep from my eyes and coffee steam from my glasses, I stumbled out to the pool this morning and its 95% clear! Whoa! I figure another day or so of filtration should do it. I will clean my back up filters for one more cycle before I put the good ones in and I will be firing up he SWG. Time to do another full chem panel!
 
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I can easily sing many time worse that those guys from Gwar.. I'll make a mint!

So, I cleaned the filter out.. it was filled with a white paste. I scooped a bunch of it out with a spoon and put in in a cup labled "4-Joy" before I blasted with a hose. I gave it a 1 gallon Cl kicker and set the SWG to 50% to see where I am. my instant salinity is reading at 2900 and my last drop tested salinity is coming in at 3100.. so I'll let that ride for now, no salt. Once I swept the pool.. it was cloudy.. the stuff is just dropping out.. when I get to a point where it seems mostly filtered out, I'll throw in the other filters.

A pic to maintain the multimedia feel of my post:
20210418_121030_sm.jpg
Yes the white puddles are the corpses of dead crystalline entities.. From here it drained into some of my hydrangeas.... I wonder what color those will be this year?
 
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