I have an above ground pool, ~18K gallons and a cartridge filter. I also have well water, with significant iron. I have a whole house filter for the iron, but that apparently isn't enough to keep iron out of the pool fill water. I normally add a sequestrant at the beginning of the season when I open the pool, and normally don't have to add much water. I get the sequestrant from my local pool store, and it is a house brand that I don't have an ingredient list for. Normally, no problems, generally have great looking pool water with pretty easy startups. Generally we get enough rain the last few years that there wasn't much fill water added. Instead, I had to keep removing water from the pool as it got too full from all the rain. This, of course, was wonderful since it kept my troublesome well water usage to a minimum.
This year, things went wrong.
1. Due to an error on my part, I inadvertently drained a lot of the water from the pool so had to put ~10K gallons in from the well.
2. Added sequestrant and let it circulate for 36 hours before adding chlorine, as normal. I don't remember how much I put in, but thinking back I don't think I put in enough
3. There was a lot of junk on the cover that ended up in the pool at startup, so water was very dark. I hit it hard with chlorine, ~22ppm FC
4. Unexpectedly, there wasn't a high chlorine demand, so it took a while for levels to come down. Pool was still not clear, but not brown.
5. TA was high, ~225ppm, so started aeration treatment with muriatic acid
6. At this point, water turned brown and opaque. No appreciable Cl demand, and lots of iron on paper towel in skimmer.
Long story short, I have a lot of iron that has been oxidized by various means and is now precipitated in the water. I've been running the filter full time, with polyplus in the skimmer basket, with some other filtering media over the skimmer basket etc trying to collect the iron. It has improved, but has been a couple weeks of filtering and feels like it will take forever to clear up the precipitated iron.
I've been researching the posts on iron control, and most are dealing with stain removal. There isn't much discussion I've seen of dealing with heavily discolored, cloudy water due to oxidized iron other than how to filter with polyfill etc.
My goal up to this point has been to remove as much iron as possible now that it has precipitated, but I'm reaching the point where we would like to have clear water without waiting for the rest of the summer. We have significant staining on the liner, but I'm not so concerned about the staining for now.
My question is what is the best thing to do to move from brown, cloudy water due to iron to clear water and happy kids? I see three paths:
1) Filtration. This is what I'm doing now, and its very slow going
2) AA treatment. In the forums this is generally discussed in terms of removing stains. But perhaps it will also drive precipitated, suspend iron back into solution where sequestration will work?
3) Sequestration using Metal Magic, or Stain-x (available at my pool store). I understand this sequesters iron that is not already oxidized, but I don't know how it impacts iron that is already oxidized.
Any advice much appreciated!
Thanks,
Dean
This year, things went wrong.
1. Due to an error on my part, I inadvertently drained a lot of the water from the pool so had to put ~10K gallons in from the well.
2. Added sequestrant and let it circulate for 36 hours before adding chlorine, as normal. I don't remember how much I put in, but thinking back I don't think I put in enough
3. There was a lot of junk on the cover that ended up in the pool at startup, so water was very dark. I hit it hard with chlorine, ~22ppm FC
4. Unexpectedly, there wasn't a high chlorine demand, so it took a while for levels to come down. Pool was still not clear, but not brown.
5. TA was high, ~225ppm, so started aeration treatment with muriatic acid
6. At this point, water turned brown and opaque. No appreciable Cl demand, and lots of iron on paper towel in skimmer.
Long story short, I have a lot of iron that has been oxidized by various means and is now precipitated in the water. I've been running the filter full time, with polyplus in the skimmer basket, with some other filtering media over the skimmer basket etc trying to collect the iron. It has improved, but has been a couple weeks of filtering and feels like it will take forever to clear up the precipitated iron.
I've been researching the posts on iron control, and most are dealing with stain removal. There isn't much discussion I've seen of dealing with heavily discolored, cloudy water due to oxidized iron other than how to filter with polyfill etc.
My goal up to this point has been to remove as much iron as possible now that it has precipitated, but I'm reaching the point where we would like to have clear water without waiting for the rest of the summer. We have significant staining on the liner, but I'm not so concerned about the staining for now.
My question is what is the best thing to do to move from brown, cloudy water due to iron to clear water and happy kids? I see three paths:
1) Filtration. This is what I'm doing now, and its very slow going
2) AA treatment. In the forums this is generally discussed in terms of removing stains. But perhaps it will also drive precipitated, suspend iron back into solution where sequestration will work?
3) Sequestration using Metal Magic, or Stain-x (available at my pool store). I understand this sequesters iron that is not already oxidized, but I don't know how it impacts iron that is already oxidized.
Any advice much appreciated!
Thanks,
Dean
