Removing Iron... Fight for the Ages!!!!

[orthobill13]

Help!

I have owned a 12,000 gallon white fiberglass pool for 8 years. I live in northern Indiana with some of the worse well water in the history of water. Iron is horrible.

Two years ago late in the season I developed a leak which turned out to be the skimmer basket hose connection. During the leak, I had to add lots of water before I found the problem. By adding so much water, the pool iron levels started to stain the white fiberglass. It looked awful. I found the AbosrbX and absorbic acid method for removing the stain, and it works wonders, but I then have tried and tried to get the iron out of the water.

Opening the pool this year, I decided that I would remove the stain from the walls, drain the pool with the iron particles theoretically suspended in the water and then refill the small pool with my soft water, hoping to eliminate lots of the iron.

When I first tested the refilled pool, iron level was .5. Then a week later is was .8, then a week later it was 1.4, then 1.5. I added zero water to the pool during that time.

I started adding a sequestrate (Pool magnet), I added the Culator pack to help ionically remove the iron, I used Sparkle Up in the filter to help, I also changed the sand in the filter (250 lbs) hoping new sand would help. Eventually the stain has come back, and I have not added any chlorine as I knew from previous experience that shocking would stain the pool.

I now have from my pool dealer a very nice add on larger canister type filter that has been running for almost a week. The stain has come back, so I did the absorbx treatment again, seqeustreant.

The iron levels over the last couple of weeks have stabilized and just now starting to come down. A week ago they were at 1.5, yesterday at 1.2.

Please understand I have not put chlorine in on purpose as my only goal right now was to lower iron levels. Here are my current readings:

FC - .1
PH - 7.6
TA - 250
CH - 15
CYA - 0

Does anyone have any other ideas on how to lower the iron level in the pool? It has been more than a month of trying to lower it and all I have done is get it from 1.5 to 1.2.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bill

 

[JoyfulNoise]

As long as you continue to use well water, your pool will suffer form iron staining. As you can see, all of those chemical products have done nothing to remove the iron from your water. The only way iron is removed is if it scales out as particulates and, for a FG pool, that typically means ugly stains all over the walls and floor. Sometimes you can raise the chlorine levels and cause the iron to scale out into solution as particles and then try to trap them with rags in the skimmer or in the filter, but that is a very iffy proposition. Proteam makes a product that will cause iron to scale out as well as calcium and that gets trapped in your filter but it's not bullet proof and does not solve the underlying problem. Finally, if you are using any sequestrants, then your "decreasing" iron levels are not really decreasing at all - the sequestrant is simply binding the iron in solution and keeping the test from measuring it (unless it is a more expensive, acid-digestion test that measures total iron).

The solution is both simple AND expensive - you need to truck in water to fill you pool! Once you fill your pool with metal-free water, you then have to control evaporation by using a pool cover religiously to minimize the need for fill water form the well. Any top-offs should be run through some kind of hose-end metal trap filter and, if possible, setup some kind of rainwater collection barrels near roof gutters to collect fill water.

Short of that, you will battle iron forever and possibly spend just as much money on fancy chemical treatments as you would on trucked-in fill water.

Good luck,

Matt