Polyfill help

[allhalekaren]

EDIT: Found out this method only works if your iron is oxidized already, meaning it’s got a dull or bright green tint to the water, or a nasty brown tint. If you know you have iron in your fill water, but it isn’t oxidized yet, bring your pool to shock level and it’ll turn the telltale green, then you’re ready for the Polyfill.





My well water has iron in it, enough that when I add chlorine into my pool, it oxidizes the iron and turns the water a dull green color. Everyone said I needed to add in a sequestriant to sequester the iron, but that it wouldn’t actually remove it from the water, and that I’d have to keep adding the sequestriant every month. Not wanting to add any more chemicals to my pool than I need to, I read about using polyfill to filter the iron out of the water. Not having a skimmer to fill with Polyfill, I rigged up a 5 gallon bucket to my pool ladder with some string, have a couple dozen 1/4” holes drilled into the bucket, and a large hole drilled into the bottom of the bucket. The bottom hole is just big enough to let the smaller end of a vacuum tube fit into and about 90% of the way down the tapered tube, it seals tight. I then got a piece of PVC pipe that just barely fits inside the return hose and the vacuum tube (both happen to be exactly the same size), connecting both the tube and the hose together. Not wanting to ruin the only hose I have for my pump, I wrapped the rigged up connection with duct tape, then sprayed rust-o-leum rubber spray around it and gave it 5 mins to set, and then wrapped that with duct tape again. I repeated this 7 or 8 times and, once pressurized by the water from the return hose, only leaks at a rate of a single drop every 8 or 9 seconds. Again, don’t want to ruin my pumps hose, so that was the best I could do. Also sprayed the rubber spray around where the bucket and vacuum tube connect. After half a day of drying time, I opened the bucket and stuffed it with as much polyfill as I could, which came to about half the big bag I got from Walmart. That stuff starts expanding when compacted pretty quickly, so had to carefully close the lid without any sticking out. Now set the bucket on the pool ladder (strings tied across underneath bucket if you can’t use the top rungs) and use another string to hold the bucket steady. If you have a small pump that might tip over or has short hoses on it, tie it down on top of another bucket filled with water (I used cat litter container). Also tie your hoses up to give some extra support if needed. Unstop your intake holes, prime pump, and then watch clean water come pouring out of the holes in the bucket. Let it run like this for a couple days depending on how dark the iron has made your pool water. You should notice a difference within a day. If its bad enough that it fills up the polyfill (not sure how you’d know without taking down the bucket and opening it since mine wasn’t bad enough to have to change the polyfill), replace the polyfill every couple of days. Soon, you’ll see the bottom of your pool, and then you’ll end up with clear clean water with the iron actually removed from your pool, without needing to buy something monthly for it.

I will end up fixing the bucket so I can hook up a garden hose to it to top off my pool when low, and filter out the iron then before it gets into my pool again. Also, as I experienced, if you turn off your pump or it loses power, when you turn it back on, some of the brown iron water will start pouring back out because of the iron settling down to the bottom when the water isn’t moving. 10 seconds later, the water coming out of the bucket was clear again and within an hour, all the brown water that had been dumped back in was filtered out again. When your pool is back clear, you might notice some iron deposits sitting on the bottom of the pool, be sure to brush those deposits so your pump and pull that through the polyfill filter.

When you’re finally done and have a clear pool again, have someone else stop up the intake holes while your turn your pump off and then quickly get the bucket down before it runs out of water. This prevents any iron from settling to the bottom and spilling out into your pool. As a warning, be careful taking the bucket down, since its now filled with iron and water and is probably heavier than you’re expecting.


I’m attaching photos of how I rigged up the bucket, what the water looked like when I turned off the pump to check the filter and some iron spilled back in, and what it looked like when finished.


Here’s a link to the Photos Album containing my pictures of my setup to filter the iron.


Didn’t think to take photos beforehand, imagine my entire pool that green color.



This is my setup with it finishing up cleaning out the iron.



This is the holes in the lid and shows what my water looked like after filtering.

Attempting the polyfil filtering after over a month of trying to balance our iron laden saltwater pool.... I have stuffed some in my skimmer. How much or how little is too much or too little? Should it be stuffed to the brim?

 

[PoolStored]

It really doesn't matter. Get what you can in the skimmer. A little bit of stuffing is ok, it is fairly "airy."

Is your water green?

 

[allhalekaren]

It really doesn't matter. Get what you can in the skimmer. A little bit of stuffing is ok, it is fairly "airy."

Is your water green?

YES. We had a green pool weekend before last and were treating it for algae by shocking the Crud out of it but it was not budging. I had been noticing a the green turn every time we shocked or added chlorine so I deduced this was a metal issue. So last Wednesday I dumped 4 lbs of AA in the pool and literally within 12 hours it was crystal blue (see picture of before and after) This is also the 3rd time we have done AA this season because we've been trying to treat metal stains on the liner, which worked but then we would shock pool too early, and it would turn green. ANYWAYS, after the AA turned pool blue, we added some Metal Out to sequester the lifted metals. And put a culator in the skimmer basket. By Friday, pool had started to look more turquise and cloudy, but still blue. Mind you the FC was almost non existent at this point. We were scared to add chlorine before our baby shower Saturday because we wanted it pretty and blue for pictures. Fast forward to this past Tuesday and it was once again green. I don't know at this point if it is algae or metals. I have been adding bleach daily and FC is holding at 1 ppm. But still green. I turned our SWG to super chlorinate, it does not seem to be getting better so at this point I am convinced the metals have oxidized again, but how could they have oxidized with FC so low??? Did we not add enough metal out? We added one 32 oz bottle after the AA treatment. I am really looking for a solution to KEEPING our blue blue because we have spent hundreds of dollars trying to trouble shoot this thing in the past month. It's an endless cycle. 2nd picture is from Tuesday

 

[Texas Splash]

Maybe try this.

From brown to 😍😍. Thank you polyfil!

We filled our pool from our well. We knew the risks and knew we would have a battle when the water was 12" deep as it looked green from the metals. Our fears were confirmed when we added chlorine and the water turned brown almost immediately. Enter 5 gallon polyfil filter. It worked...

www.troublefreepool.com

 

[allhalekaren]

Update!!! I think we have won the fight against metals. We were so close to giving up and draining the pool and refilling with fresh water. My husband's polyfil bucket has been going nonstop for 2 weeks now, but it had not been getting any better. We even added two bottles of Pro Team Metal Magic on Monday of this week. We had gotten it from swamp green to more of a dark turquoise but it just would not turn.

We had noticed the chlorine was not holding either. We'd add some liquid chlorine in the AM and it would be gone by the evening. During these weeks we DID get about a week straight worth of rain. So we were starting to think it was algae. As much as I really did not want to shock to the pool again and risk our metal stains coming back, I figured we should try to rid the pool of a possible algae bloom. We added the HTH system green to blue last night. We did all 4 packets of the Step 1. Then switched filter over to recirculate and added step 2. After that circulated for an hour we turned everything off and let it sit overnight. My husband and I were prepared to still see green this morning since that's what we have been fighting ALL SUMMER every time we shock or add chlorine, the metals have just precipitated out and turned the water green and caused stains. But low and behold the water was actually BLUE!!!!!!!!!!!! I think his bucket filter has been working this whole time, and we had an algae bloom during all that rain that was keeping it green. We have a heck of a vacuuming job ahead of us but I am so relieved, these metals in the pool have caused us so much grief and money!!

 

[Texas Splash]

Nice to hear you made some progress. Keep in mind those over-teh-counter products come wiht some risk of side effects. You may already know that and figured it was time to try something else. It is true that whenever there's a chance of iron and algae at the same time, you always have to treat the algae first. That's also a perfect time for polyfill since the elevated FC level of the SLAM Process will aggravate the iron out of solution and make it easier to filter.'

Regardless, if you have any questions about the SLAM Process or what to do in the future let us know. Enjoy your weekend.

 

[mknauss]

Cal Hypo followed by Floc. Hope you do not have issues with the Floc.

 

[allhalekaren]

Cal Hypo followed by Floc. Hope you do not have issues with the Floc.

It definitely is tricky to vacuum up! Went too fast at first, it caused a lot of cloudiness, then went slow slow as possible while we could still see through water but the stuff we stirred up overtook the water and made it cloudy and green again.