Ugghh I have iron stains

Katodude

Silver Supporter
Aug 22, 2017
2,583
West Palm Beach/Florida
Pool Size
15000
Surface
Plaster
Chlorine
Salt Water Generator
SWG Type
Hayward Aqua Rite (T-15)
Confirmed it three times. Got some AA put it in a sock and hit the spots in three different places. The stains came up nicely. Now I have created some clean spots in the pool which are of course driving me crazy. The good news is the plaster looks really beautiful underneath the stains.

I have read just about every post here on the AA treatment. Drop the FC, put the AA in. The stains should lift pretty quickly. Dump the water and refill. It looks like trying to filter out the iron has had limited success. Besides dumping the water is a good opportunity to lower my CH which it a tad high but not unmanageable.

My pool likes to develop Black Algae so I anticipate this happening when lowering the FC. My property is a good 4 feet about the surrounding golf course so I am not really worried about the water table. The pool did sit empty for about 4 months when we did our renovation about 4 years ago.

Here is my plan:

Reduce FC over a couple of days.
Start AA treatment in the morning. Should be complete by mid afternoon.
Start the water drain, and continue overnight.
First thing in the morning go into the pool and hit all the BA with a brush and some LC from a pump sprayer (get it good and dead)
Start the fill. It takes about 12 hours to fill my pool with two hoses from what I remember. Make sure to take before and after pictures of the water meter to get a good estimate of pool volume. I will also add a couple of meters to the hoses to double check the measurements.
Add chemicals and enjoy brand new looking pool.

Ideally I should do this in December or January when the temps are cool and we have the least amount of sunlight to avoid damaging the plaster and minimizing the algae growth. Although our pool never really gets below 70 degrees.

I dont know if I am going to lose my mind waiting that long.
 
Does your fill water have iron? Ours does and our pool is brand new so I've just decided to use sequesterant until next spring when we'll have time to filter via polyfill. I found that skimmer socks help capture the iron too.
 
I have read out water report which does not mention iron (but I hear that is normal). It does mention copper but the stains appear to be iron.

We did use Clorex Salt for a while which may have contributed, and did some partial fills from our well. So I am most likely to blame for the iron.

 
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Does your fill water have iron? Ours does and our pool is brand new so I've just decided to use sequesterant until next spring when we'll have time to filter via polyfill. I found that skimmer socks help capture the iron too.
The Milwaukee Instruments iron meter was a good $58 investment for me to get a handle on my iron situation myself, testing myself.
 
The Milwaukee Instruments iron meter was a good $58 investment for me to get a handle on my iron situation myself, testing myself.

Hmmm, I dont mind another gadget, in fact I enjoy them. But does this thing work?

Does @JoyfulNoise have an opinion on this item?
 
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Hmmm, I dont mind another gadget, in fact I enjoy them. But does this thing work?

Does @JoyfulNoise have an opinion on this item?

Phenatroline is a standard photometric iron test chemical for dissolved iron (typically Fe2+). Taylor sells a visual comparator test that uses the same chemistry. I’m sure the unit works fine for iron testing.
 
Phenatroline is a standard photometric iron test chemical for dissolved iron (typically Fe2+). Taylor sells a visual comparator test that uses the same chemistry. I’m sure the unit works fine for iron testing.
Wow. I did not know they had al sorts of tests


And double the price of the "gadget"

 

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Wow. I did not know they had al sorts of tests


And double the price of the "gadget"


I would use the liquid based reagents and slide comparator rather than a digital unit simply because my eyeballs don’t need calibration and, if my eyeballs aren’t working right, there’s always several other sets of eyeballs lying around the house.
 
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