Clear Pool after 48 hours of filling

[kristen]

Woo-hoo *doing a little happy dance* I thought I'd post a positive story about removing iron from your pool :) I bought an 18ftx48" Intex above the ground pool (5,455 gal) and after doing a lot of research on iron and water decided on running a GAME AquaQuick 3/4 HP Sand Filter and Pump System for it. Our well water has 80ppm iron in it, we have a very shallow well and we've had a lot of flooding this year so needless to say our water is pretty disgusting. It took two days to fill the pool up to get it ready for the filtering system. The water was so brown that you could put your hand in the water and not be able to see it 6inches down. At the suggestion of pooldoc on here I added some polyquat to my pool and then I just let the filter do it's job. I did add a sock stuffed with old wash cloths to the return for a 4 hours but took it off because it was a little too much work to keep cleaning. The sand filter runs at 2500 gallon's per hour and after 48 hours of it running constantly we have clear water, I have to vacuum the bottom to get some iron residue and sand off (I pulled a dumbo move and hooked up my backwash tube wrong so when cleaning the sand it went back into the pool...live and learn). So there is hope for those with awful water. I highly recommend upgrading to a sand filter. Good luck to everyone else!

[Watermom]

Congrats!! Thanks for coming back and writing about your success. Not only will it give ideas to others but it will also give hope to somebody who may be struggling with their own well water issue! Dance away! :):):)

[kristen]

Thought I'd come back and update the thread. So it seems most of the iron settled on the bottom of the pool, I bought a what seemed like a nice vacuum for the pool, but it broke shortly after starting to use it. So what we did was backwashed the sand filter, boy was that water nasty, then we turned it back on filter again, brushed the heck out of the pool to get the iron back up floating, added chlorine in a floater, filled the pool up some more but this time put a sock stuffed with washcloths on the end of the hose, and today we have NO iron in the pool. :) So very very happy!

Good luck to everyone fighting iron in their water! It is possible to get rid of it, if I can do it with 80ppm then others can too!

[mbar]

Yeah!, I love this forum!

[kristen]

Well I'm still battling the levels a little bit, but they are getting better with each passing day. I can't say how glad I am that we spent the extra money on getting a sand filter, I've had to backwash it a handful of times now, but it is a breeze to work with and it's doing an amazing job removing the iron.

This forum is a great resource and thank you so much for putting the time into running this. I would have been lost without it :)

[Watermom]

Good to hear that things are going well and glad that you have been helped by the forum. It IS a great resource and there are lots of us who would be lost without it for all kinds of reasons! Thanks for writing.