Applying stain remover to entire pool instead of spot treatment, effective?

[Rockstead]

I bought a large bottle of granular stain removal from my pool store. I had rusty screws in my returns which I believe caused rust to appear along my fibreglass steps, skimmer, and other places and I also have a few green spots I can’t remove from my deep end that I’ve had for a few seasons.

Rather than spot treat, is it effective to pour the entire 2KG of granular container in my skimmer and have the whole pool treated? I was reading you have to lower PH and chlorine for that.

Other than that, do spot treatments tend to work well, can I place it in a sock and rub on spots that way too? I have so many, both green and brown and that’s why I would like to first try having it applied to the entire pool but not if it’s not an effective way of applying it but I don’t mind the expense.

 

[ajw22]

What is the chemical content of that granular stain remover? Post pics of the labels. We never dump unknown stuff into pool water.

Green stains can be copper. Brown can be iron. Neither will be removed from the water with a stain remover. All the stain remover may do is put the metals in suspension. Then when the remover degrades the metals and stain will return.

Read the sections on metals in Stains in Your Pool - Trouble Free Pool. You need to understand the full process before you begin.

 

[Pool_Medic]

It’s possible yes, but chlorine should be lowered to zero and ph to 7.0. Ppl use poly60 to insure algae Iesha take hold during the AA treatment.

 

[Rockstead]

I’m attaching a copy of the label. I tried putting some in a sock to remove the brown stains on the stairs and the problem is that it dissolved too quickly.

My pool is about 100,000 Litres and the instructions say to pour as much as 300g per 10,000 litres. So that’s about 25,000 gallons and the application would be about 6.5 pounds.

I’ll lower the PH and chlorine as per instructions.

The pool store was no help in terms of best practice.

Do I just pour it in pool or dilute first and just pour it in the pool? Should I be scrubbing problem areas or will this just magically lift it all off. If I need to scrub, how soon do I start after pouring it in?

 

[ajw22]

That is just a mix of Ascorbic Acid and Dry Acid.

I suggest you follow the process described in Stains in Your Pool - Trouble Free Pool

In the vast majority of pools metal staining comes from iron. Iron is fairly common in well water but rare in municipal water. If you suspect a stain is caused by iron try the Vitamin C test. Place 15 to 20 Vitamin C tablets in a sock and crush them. Hold the sock on the stain for 3 to 5 minutes. If the stain vanishes or lightens then it is iron.

Then ...

You can remove iron stains with ascorbic acid (Vit C). See this article, Ascorbic Treatment to rid Pool of metal stains, for directions on how.

Using ascorbic acid instead of your stain stuff wll not add sulfates into the water which is bad for your SWG.

 

[Rockstead]

Is there any danger with the family swimming after I apply the 6 pounds of Citric Acid / Sodium Bisulfate?

 

[ajw22]

Your pool may have little if any CL and low pH. I don’t know how acidic the pH will get.

You should bypass your heat pump if you can to protect it from acidic water.