Ascorbic Treatment to rid Pool of metal stains

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Questions:
1. Does the ascorbic acid treatment work for removal of all types of metal stains? For iron, copper and calcium?
2.How does water temperature effect the treatment? If water is cold, will it still work but just take longer? Or will it not work at all? My current water temperature is about 55 F.
3.Will more ascorbic acid be needed to remove stains at a lower water temp?

Thanks! :)
 
1) No. Ascorbic acid is only effective for iron stains. While it will occasionally remove copper stains, it often makes them much worse, and it has no effect on calcium at all.
2) Lower temperatures make the stain removal take longer. Very cold water means a lot longer.
3) No, just patience.
 
Thanks for the response. I had been waiting for the water to get warmer and I wish I had just gone ahead and tried this sooner! I have put about 1.5 lb of ascorbic acid directly on stains on steps and ledges and they have gone from dark brown to yellowish already. Some have disappeared all together. Apparently the stains must be due to iron. So far that seems to be the case anyway. I had also lowered my pH with muriatic acid before adding the ascorbic acid - my thinking being that a lower pH would help the reaction. Not sure if that thinking is correct but it seemed logical. My pool is 25,000 gallons so I have added about 1/2 lb AA per 10,000 gallons so far. I may end up needing the full 1 lb per 10,000 gallons. My pH was 7.2 before I added the extra muriatic acid. I will take a water sample in to see where the levels are now - and maybe to purchase more ascorbic acid. There are still stains in the deep end that I need to get out.
Thanks so much!! :)
 
Ok..don't laugh too hard at this question...my pool is an above ground Intex Ultra Frame pool (5000 gallons) and I DO have metal staining - what if I take a large bottle of vitamin C tablets, put them in a sock and hold it over the stains I have, will that work? When I winterized my pool, covered it up for the winter months (I live in Florida, didn't want to take it down), the stains went away with nothing done and I really don't understand why that happened. Then I uncovered it and got it ready for the summer and the stains appeared again. So..you think that would work, the sock and the tablets? :) :wave:
 
Yes, tablets in a sock will work just fine as long as the area involved isn't too large. If there are stains everywhere you might as well do the whole treatment. But if the stains are localized the sock approach works well.
 
Just ordered my AA to give this a shot and FYI...5lb bag was $32. I'm sure that's more than I need but I figured better to have too much than not enough and considering what I've spent on BBB so far $32 ain't a whole lot.

Can't wait to see the difference!
 

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I just did this again, because my stains came back (I failed to add sequestrant after the initial treatment, and I also let the ph creep up to 7.8), but my question is this:

Both times I have done this, after applying the AA and waiting overnight, the pool comes completely clean, but it left a brown precipitate. What is this, and should I be vacuuming it to waste, rather than to filter? Is this some of my metals?
 
I've tried Vitamin C tablets and it helped a little bit..a friend of mine suggested pouring 2 gallons of white vinegar to my 5,000 gallon Intex ag pool, the copper stains faded quite a bit over a period of a few days, but are still there. LOL....white vinegar! Water still seems clear and clean, stains faded so they don't bother me too much.
 
Vinegar is acidic so it's more likely that just lowering the pH with any acid such as Muriatic Acid would have had the same effect. The normal procedure for copper stains is to lower the pH and use a metal sequestrant (some lower the pH themselves). Ascorbic acid works better on iron stains since they need a reducing agent.
 
Hello! I had to join the forum and comment on this.

Last year I battled what I thought was nasty algae. I shocked and shocked and nothing. This year after opening and seeing the same thing I went looking for a solution. I read the tips about touching the stains with Vitamin C tabs and thought "this cant be". Well I grabbed a couple of tabs and don't you know, the stain lifted in seconds!

So AA treatment it is. Problem was the pool was just shocked and had a nice amount of chlorine. Now I am not the patient type, so I used a chlorine nuetrilizer and wound up doing two 4lb treatments 24 hours apart. I also bought the AA local and paid a premium for it! I told you I'm not patient.

After about 24 hours the pool looked ok, so I did the second 4lb. 24 hours later and the pool looks fantastic! I am just starting to balance the water and it seems to still be eating chlorine. I have attached a before and after pictures of my results. The after picture was about 48 hours after initial dose, and if you can believe it looks ever better now. In all my searching I really couldn't find pictures so I hope this helps some one else.

Thanks for being here!
Seth



35347t1.jpg


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Bama Rambler said:
Wow! That's impressive. I'm glad you posted pics. That's a dramatic difference! Are you maintaining a sequestrant level after this?

:goodjob:
Click to expand...

I actually forgot to mention, I added the sequestrant before the AA treatment. I dont know if this has any bearing on process. Is there any way to check the seq level?
 

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