Iron staining that won't end

[Swampwoman]

Lsx, just checking in. Glad to hear you plumbed the soft water and refilled.

Two quick tips...when filling, check that your salt hasnt bridged...happened to me last week and as a result, I dumped .5 ppm (whole pool read, so obviously more than .5 went in...sigh). So keep an eye on it (says someone who didn't.

Second tip is that when using softened water to refill, you're best to maintain ch when there are possible metals...eg even for a vinyl pool like mine, the sequestrant mfgs recommend 200 ppm. It helps in the binding, I guess.

Lastly, Poolgeek.com ships free on orders over $100 and since you're in Michigan, that means next day delivery for you. I gang up my CH and sequestrant orders to get the free shipping because its way easier to have 20 lbs of ch arrive to your doorstep Plus, their price is historically the best on Metal Magic if you end up needing to get a bit. With the water change, I'm hopeful you won't need much, eg startup dose then 6 oz per 10k gallons a month.

 

[LSxBrad]

Just wanted to report back on my success so far this year.

The winter cover ended up with a hole in it, and leaked dirty water into the pool over the course of the winter. I decided to completely drain the pool. I also scrubbed every square inch of fiberglass with a bleach mix, and used ascorbic acid on some residual staining. Just wanted to start completely fresh. Pool is perfectly white now.

Over the winter, I have been fine tuning my well water quality. I feel it is now just about as good as city water, but more soft. Still using the same Terminox iron filter, followed up by a water softener, but the softener is now regenerating more frequently, but with less salt per regen. It seems to be keeping all of my plumbing fixtures rust free.

I also changed my filter sand, just in case it had any contamination, but it came out as white as the new stuff.

I found a supplemental Pentek brand iron removal catridge filter, that fits a "Big Blue" filter housing. I figured for under $100, I'd give it a try. I mounted this to the end of my hose, and will only use it to fill the pool. 7500 gallons later, and the filter still looks perfectly white, so it was probably unnecessary, but at this point, I was pulling out all of the stops. I hope to never have to buy Metal Magic or Pink Stuff again.

I have been working on getting the chemistry balanced, but the pool has been full for almost 2 weeks, with no staining.

pH 7.2
CH 230 (had to add 10# of calcium chloride to get here)
TA 200 and coming down
CYA 65
FC 5.0-7.0
This puts my CSI around -.3.
-Taylor 2006K

As a side note, I can't quite figure out how the CYA got so high. Obviously, when I refilled the pool, it had to be zero...never checked it though. Knowing that I needed at least some, I was shooting for ~30, and used 4# of dichlor while filling, over the course of a few days (had some dichlor "shock" leftover from the last year or two and figured I'd use it up, instead of buying actual stabilizer). By the pool math calculator, I should have been around 35. I wish it was a little lower, but I'm going to live with it as is. None of my neighbors with pools even know what CYA is, and only use dichlor/trichlor for their chlorine source, and they never have algae issues. By the end of summer, they have to be over 100, one would think.

I'm surprised how much daytime chlorine demand there is as well. I ran a test overnight, and it only lost 1ppm chlorine, and combined chlorine is zero, so I don't think it is being consumed by anything organic. It has been unseasonably hot here over the last week or so, so it could just be the heat and sunlight? No swimmers have been in so far either. My only chlorine source for the rest of the year is 12.5% bleach.