Iron Filter

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R

R2W55

0
Apr 9, 2015
3
Crystal Lake, IL
I am using well water and have Very, Very high Iron. While I have the water cleared up, it is staining the side walls. GLB Stain magnet works great, as does Muriatic acid, or rubbing with Vitamin tablets, but I keep having to apply it.
While one of the Chemistry articles here say to only solution is to drain and refill with 'good' water I really don't have that option.

I recently saw an U-Tube video on a home made Iron Filter. I have also read numerous articles saying the same method

Basically they took a 5 gallon bucket, put a fill tube on the bottom and couple of drain holes in the lid. They then filled it with Poly Fill for "stuffing pillows'. The poly fill removed was brown with the iron! No surprise but does this really remove the iron?

My question is has anybody used this and does it really work? I don't mind running this for a long time to eventually remove it all.

I have an in-ground, concrete bottom, fiberglass walls about 23,000 gallons.
 
Hello R2W55! I see you haven't received a reply yet on your post about iron filtering. I just wanted to let you know we haven't forgotten about you. The server problems have impacted several forum replies. This reply should get your posting updated back to the top of the queue where hopefully someone experienced with your specific question can provide some constructive answers. Thanks for checking-in with TFP, and have a great day.

In the meantime, here are some notes and links I had on this subject:

Many people have it filtered away in a few days on its own, or resort to the use of a metal sequestrant to help filter it. If it starts to look like coffee, then it requires immediate action. Here are a couple links you may find useful:
Pool School - Metals in the Water and Metal Stains
Green water and low ph
 
People have had limited success in raising the FC to shock level and then filtering out the iron. I've seen people use paper towels in the skimmer and even those little "iron filters" on the fill. The polyfil would probably work as well as anything and if you compressed it well the path through it would make pretty good filter media. Even if it didn't remove it all, it may remove enough to help the staining you're seeing.
 
Several members have reported using pillow stuffing like you saw on the youtube video works fairly well at filtering out iron. You may need to change the stuffing frequently until all the iron is filtered out.
 
R2W...for the "pillow stuffing bucket" to work, the iron has to be oxidized, meaning your water will have yellow to briwn tint. That happens when people shock (it oxidizes iron) and/or don't keep sequestrant levels maintained.

You said your water is clear but staining, which means you've sequestered the metal, but possibly not enough or possibly higher ph is causing it to stain...controlling for metal stains works best at around a ph of 7.2...higher and you wil start to see stains.

So, your choices are either to deliberately oxidize the iron in order to try to reduce it (which may also increase staining), THEN treat for staining using Ascorbic Acid treatment, OR to more heavily sequester, and try to reduce your iron over time when you makeup water. The problem with that plan will be that your makeup water is full of iron.

Last year I tried a mega dose of metal magic (5 qts) per the sponge test....in my pool, it both sequestered the iron AND removed staining. See ths thread about that approach, whereby RavenJim discovered the metal magic sponge test and describes what he did: Switching Sequestrate from EDTA to HEDP

In addition, I've also run a softened water spigot for makeup water, which has now (after a few years) reduced my iron content to about .3 ppm

You could use the bucket idea to filter you're makeup water, btw...any kind of filtering of the raw water will help.
 
OK I'm about to pull my hair out!! I have been using stain removers (which remove them) and the adding sequestering agents to filter out. I even put those string filters (used in whole house filters) in the skimmers. those I thought was removing some of it as I had to rinse them off 2-3 times a day.
I took my water in to tested and Surprise, NO Iron and No Copper!!
FAV .68
TC .78
pH 7.37
TA 98
Calcium 231
Cyanuric Acid 56
copper 0
Iron 0
Phosphates 1750
Phosphates are high because the Sequestering agents .

I saw a picture on another site that showed the exact type of staining which the caption said low chlorine levels!!! this I find hard to believe but I have been keeping chlorine low for the sequestering agents to work.

ANY Ideas?????
 
The sequestering agents bind to the metals and keep them from reacting with the test reagents, hence you get false readings of no metals.

If Vitamin C lifted the stains, it's metal.

Organic stains - generally caused by accumulated leaves and acorns and whatnot over the winter will fade over time with chlorine in the water. Same exact process as using bleach in the wash to brighten your whites.
 
Thanks Richard. I just took a Vitamin C tablet and rubbed on the staining. YEP wiped right off. So the question is still how to get rid of it.. If I have it in solution so that testing doesn't see it and the filter doesn't seem to remove it. I am using Zeo brite media. So just live with it until I lower the water this fall and replace with expensive bought water? Should be about 1/2 the volume.
I have used my well to fill in the past and Never had this problem before. I did try the 'Metal Trap' this year and am wondering if this might have caused it.
 
Best way to get rid of iron is aeration. Rig up a fountain that lands in a catch basin large enough to hold 5 min of flow. Then rig a pipe from the surface of the basin back to the pool. The bottom of the basin will fill with iron particles. Bleach will accelerate the process dramatically.
 

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I used this method last summer after my water turned brown. I used a cheap 5 gallon storage container with a lid and stuffing from a pillow. You must secure the lid so it doesn't come off from the pressure of the water. I drilled a lot of holes around the top of the container itself, inserted the part of the filter hose that shoots water back to the pool on the bottom of one side and stuffed it full of polyester. I set the container on the pool ladder so the water could spray back into the pool. It took about 5 days (turned off at night) of constant filtering and a lot of rinsing the polyester but it worked like a charm. I'm getting ready to fill my pool back up in a week or so and I'm planning to use this method right off the bat.
 
The polyfill and bucket method works great if the iron has turned the water brown. Not sure how good it will work to stop it in the first place. Defiantly going to pay attention to this one to see how it turns out.
 
I saw on another thread where they had added a small amount of de powder to a sand filter for cloudy water. Would this help to remove some of the metal as well?
 
If you fill your pool from a well, the chances are really good you may have iron. Mechanical filtration might be a good stop gap but then you refill from that same well and more iron gets in your pool..

The permanent fix is to get rid of the well water. No amount of mechanical filtering will really fix the problem at all.
 
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