Help!!! Iron stains from what??

[EngineeredPool]

Thanks for more information!!

Pool is looking great besides for the stains making it green. Supplies should arrive today and tomorrow for the AA. My FC is at 6.5 this morning, coming down from SLAM, and should lose quite a bit today to sun. ph is 7.1 or 7.2 (slightly lighter than the 7.2 mark).

I will need to add more salt and cya at some point before the pool is good to go with the swg and no liquid chlorine supplementing. Any opinions on adding salt and/or cya before, during, or after AA treatment? Or does it not matter? My search skills are not finding anything conclusive.

 

[Apsuhead]

I did an AA treatment at the end of last summer. I used too much AA and the powder really accumulated and seemed to gunk up my sand filter for a while. But the stains disappeared immediately. I put polyfil in my skimmer, but I put the Metal Magic in before that so the polyfil didn't catch anything. Lesson learned. I had slight staining return this spring and I put a bottle of Metal Magic in the pool and it all disappeared but I can see it slowly creeping back. My plan is to try to survive this season and then do another AA treatment this fall and then use polyfil to try to remove it from the water. My fiberglass pool was new last year and we had red clay all around in the lawn. The dog and kids getting in the pool with dirty feet all year added enough iron to stain my light blue pool shell. Good luck!

 

[Momma4]

Me too! I’m another one that struggles with the iron staining! I have a thread on here from two years ago called “please critique my iron stating plan of attack “ and I documented what I had to go through to get rid of my iron staining, and it worked like a charm. But now it’s back.

I thought I would try the full AA treatment that’s listed on here, using the Sequestrant and everything. Y’all I dumped 8 quarts of that purple stuff in my pool and I could not get the parts per million above eight (I bought the sequestrant test from Jack’s magic)

So now, because I was trying to do the AA treatment for too long, and my FC was too low, the algae started growing. Now I’m in midSLAM but I’m using mechanical methods to get the iron out of the pool. My pool is a bright green because the iron has precipitated so I’ve got poly fill in the skimmers and my filter is catching a lot. I’m back washing every day and the water is brown when it comes out. Hoping I get the same results as I do two years ago, but I don’t see why I wouldn’t seeing I’m doing the exact same thing.

I’ve also had my fill water tested, and there’s no iron in it. So there’s either trace amounts in it that’s not detectable that takes a couple years to build back up, or right now my main suspect is the metal gazebo that’s next to my pool. I’m thinking maybe the rain water is running off of the gazebo and into the pool.

I just wanted to chime in here and give you some encouragement, you’re not the only one dealing with it, and I know the iron stains are a real pain. I do love putting that ascorbic acid in the pool though because it’s like I’m a miracle worker haha

 

[EngineeredPool]

Really appreciate knowing I'm not alone, haha. My pool is looking sooooo good except for the freaking stains! I like my pools blue not green, haha. My FC is on its way down, algaecide 60 is in the pool to hopefully beat off algae and we might be starting the AA soon. Ahhh. At least I got a s+$t ton of vit c for pretty cheap to have on hand if I have to do it all over again. Blah!

 

[zapados]

I decided to do an AA treatment this year. I had my fill water tested, and the iron content is "ND" (not detectable), so my fill water wasn't the issue. In my case I had a rebar stain that was producing active rust from a piece of rebar too close to the surface of the plaster. I mean active like last season rust particles formed in a lump on the plaster where this rebar was and brushing it poofed off a big cloud of rust! I took too long to deal with it (multiple seasons) and trying to get someone out to fix it during pandemic times was really difficult so it was end of last season by the time someone came out for it. So by the time I took my pool water to the pool store for an iron test, the level was 0.2. I had orange stains on my white plastic fixtures in the pool - like the main drain and intakes for the waterfall etc and also brown staining on my plaster.

I have a 40K gallon pool so put two pounds of AA in, sprinkling around the edges. The miracle everyone else describes is real! The plaster and all fixtures looked brand new in short order! But I didn't want to use sequestrant because it is expensive (someone above said it wasn't, but it seems to be about $30 per quart, so $120 for me every time I would have needed to top it up!) And because I am not adding iron back via my fill water, I just wanted the iron gone from my pool water! I put polyfill (ripped out of some $2 walmart pillows) in the three skimmers I have and turned the main drain closer to closed than I normally have it to pull more water through the skimmers. After 24 hours I started raising the chlorine again fairly slowly - which was easy because the AA seemed to be eating the chlorine in a big way! The pool stayed sparkling and polyfill bright white, until about five days later when I started pushing the chlorine up higher and my ph had gone up a bit to 7.6 or so. Then over the course of an hour, my pool went from completely crystal clear to lime green - but still very clear. From that point on the polyfill in the skimmers started turning brown, and it took about 24 hours of leaving the filter on high speed, changing the polyfill a few times and keeping the chlorine around 3-4 or so to get the pool clear again. There may be some slight staining back, but certainly nothing compared to what it was! I may do another half strength AA treatment, but I'm not sure. So it's too soon to call success yet I guess, because maybe the staining will come back over the coming week or two. But so far, I am hoping I got alot of the iron out by filtering and avoided using any sequestrant.
The pictures below show
1) the pool after AA treatment
2) the pool after the one hour change to green color that happened a few days later
3) the polyfill after it had been in the skimmers overnight that same night
4) the pool after 24 hours of polyfill filtering following the lime green color change with chlorine around 3-4. It's 95% clear (that picture was taken in less light than the first one - they aren't really as different as they look). That is a watermelon ball 9 feet deep in the last picture.

View attachment 413760View attachment 413761View attachment 413762View attachment 413763

So that last picture kind of looks like my pool after an AA treatment I'm doing right now. It still seems to have some of that yellowing/browning in the top left corner, if you cut the picture diagonally, top right to bottom left. The bottom right looks more clear. Is this some kind of illusion? How did you clear that up?

That first picture looks AMAZING. Nice pool!

 

[PCR]

So that last picture kind of looks like my pool after an AA treatment I'm doing right now. It still seems to have some of that yellowing/browning in the top left corner, if you cut the picture diagonally, top right to bottom left. The bottom right looks more clear. Is this some kind of illusion? How did you clear that up?

That first picture looks AMAZING. Nice pool!

I think the left/right thing is just that as you move to the right the pool gets shallower. The water still had a slight tinge of green/iron when I took this picture, so that is magnified in the deeper water and just makes that left/deeper side of the picture look a little darker. The AA plus polyfill got rid of about 85-90% of the staining. I think inevitably some will redeposit at the same time as you are filtering out with the polyfill. I did the AA treatment a week and a half ago, and the chlorine is just starting to hold better now! That AA really seems to neutralize the chlorine for a while, and I have gone through a number of supplementary gallons of chlorine. I'm overall very happy with the AA treatment + polyfill so far - fingers crossed Good luck with your pool!

 

[Momma4]

How is it going with your pool? Elevated chlorine and my polyfill are doing the trick for me!

 

[EngineeredPool]

Pool looks fantastic right now. Did the AA treatment and algaecide on Weds evening. Ended up having to add 4lbs of AA to get all the stains (plus I still had an FC of 1, didn't want to risk an extra 24 hrs at 0 so went for it). Decided to hold off on the sequestrant for now to see if we can filter some out before doing another AA if needed. The sequestrant is expensive and AA is cheap! Ph got down to 6.8 on Thurs. Thursday evening I bumped it up to 7.2 with washing soda. Added in a gallon of 12.5% bleach. Also started adding in my cya. Still bleach in there this morning somehow!! Added in some more bleach to hold it over today. Will take all the measurements again tonight!

 

[Apsuhead]

Looks great! I hope you can filter out some iron so it won’t come back.

 

[Momma4]

A high level of FC helps with the filtration. For us, a SLAM level of FC precipitated the iron (the pool turned green) which allowed both my sand filter and the polyfill to get it. I’ve been backwashing almost every day and the wastewater comes out brown.

 

[lwtaylor]

I decided to do an AA treatment this year. I had my fill water tested, and the iron content is "ND" (not detectable), so my fill water wasn't the issue. In my case I had a rebar stain that was producing active rust from a piece of rebar too close to the surface of the plaster. I mean active like last season rust particles formed in a lump on the plaster where this rebar was and brushing it poofed off a big cloud of rust! I took too long to deal with it (multiple seasons) and trying to get someone out to fix it during pandemic times was really difficult so it was end of last season by the time someone came out for it. So by the time I took my pool water to the pool store for an iron test, the level was 0.2. I had orange stains on my white plastic fixtures in the pool - like the main drain and intakes for the waterfall etc and also brown staining on my plaster.

I have a 40K gallon pool so put two pounds of AA in, sprinkling around the edges. The miracle everyone else describes is real! The plaster and all fixtures looked brand new in short order! But I didn't want to use sequestrant because it is expensive (someone above said it wasn't, but it seems to be about $30 per quart, so $120 for me every time I would have needed to top it up!) And because I am not adding iron back via my fill water, I just wanted the iron gone from my pool water! I put polyfill (ripped out of some $2 walmart pillows) in the three skimmers I have and turned the main drain closer to closed than I normally have it to pull more water through the skimmers. After 24 hours I started raising the chlorine again fairly slowly - which was easy because the AA seemed to be eating the chlorine in a big way! The pool stayed sparkling and polyfill bright white, until about five days later when I started pushing the chlorine up higher and my ph had gone up a bit to 7.6 or so. Then over the course of an hour, my pool went from completely crystal clear to lime green - but still very clear. From that point on the polyfill in the skimmers started turning brown, and it took about 24 hours of leaving the filter on high speed, changing the polyfill a few times and keeping the chlorine around 3-4 or so to get the pool clear again. There may be some slight staining back, but certainly nothing compared to what it was! I may do another half strength AA treatment, but I'm not sure. So it's too soon to call success yet I guess, because maybe the staining will come back over the coming week or two. But so far, I am hoping I got alot of the iron out by filtering and avoided using any sequestrant.
The pictures below show
1) the pool after AA treatment
2) the pool after the one hour change to green color that happened a few days later
3) the polyfill after it had been in the skimmers overnight that same night
4) the pool after 24 hours of polyfill filtering following the lime green color change with chlorine around 3-4. It's 95% clear (that picture was taken in less light than the first one - they aren't really as different as they look). That is a watermelon ball 9 feet deep in the last picture.

View attachment 413760View attachment 413761View attachment 413762View attachment 413763

I know it's been awhile, but did the iron stains come back after this method?