New Pool Owner With High Iron Manually Removing Iron

Hi Marie.

I actually found a way to remove iron - really remove it. No more chemicals!!!

We took a 5-gal bucket (Fresh Step kitty litter, plastic bucket). My husband drilled holes all over it, he put a big hole in the lid (to accommodate a hose), got his sump pump, hooked a hose from the output on the pump, stuck the other end of the hose in the hole he made in the lid of the bucket, filled the bucket with pillow stuffing (a whole pillow's worth), put the lid on the bucket, sunk both the pump and the bucket (now connected to each other) in the pool. Some batting came out of the bucket and settled in the skimmer - and 15 hours later, we can see under water across the pool (it was opaque brown when we started this). We pulled out the bucket (and gross brown water flowed from it - it made a yucky cloud in the pool), but we rinsed the stuffing out (kept it in the bucket) and removed the stuffing from the skimmer (BROWN), cleaned it and put the bucket back in the pool and clean stuffing in the skimmer. I can't tell you how absolutely amazing this is.

We were searching for pool-water deliverers and making plans to drain/refill. It was going to cost us another $300 - and that plan wasn't perfect, because we still have to fill from our well.

We weren't sure what to expect - but I can tell you, we didn't expect this.

I'm still shocking like mad. I have to test for all my levels today at the store (no kit yet) and we continue to collect the iron.

I'm so incredibly excited - It's not clear - and it's still brown (diluted iced tea with a hint of green) - but not only can we see the bottom, we can see the bottom across the pool! I'm hoping by tonight, we might actually have clear water!!! Then I can focus on getting in it rather than finding another way to deal with the iron - and all that comes with having iron.

I'm also surprised I haven't seen this mentioned in this thread - so I'm waiting for the bad news about this method.

Update: The homemade and sand filter have been in use for about 43 hrs now. Both are catching lots of iron. The water isn't clear yet - but I am catching glimpses of the bottom in the right light (patterned pool liner). The water is a greenish/turquoise color. We recirculated the water for several hours yesterday, because we could see a noticeable 'clearing' start between sand filter's ouput (input into the pool) and the homemade filter. We didn't want to keep filtering the same water (I know we're really not - but we wanted to rustle things up a bit and get the water moving toward the homemade filter).

I put about another 6 gals of bleach in yesterday and used Borax each time as well to try and keep the pH in check.

Took a sample to the pool store today and my numbers are:

CL/FC - 5
TA - 150
CYA - 0
pH - off-their-charts high (oops)
Iron - 2 (was 3 when we first opened the pool)

Not sure what's going on with CYA - I dissolved a whole bottle since Wed or Thu and continue to use pucks a couple times a day. Still no reading.

Still putting DE into sand filter with each backwash - it's catching tons of iron as is the homemade filter.

We've cleaned the pillow batting in the homemade filter 7 or 8 times since Friday evening and backwashed about 4 times.

I put another 1.5 gals of bleach in today to try and reach shock level, in case my green hue is due to algae. I also put a little muratic acid in to bring pH down - will check levels in a couple hours to see if I need to bring TA up since it was at a good level (150).

Water is definitely changing toward the better and iron is definitely dropping. Will keep you posted. I sure hope I'll get a clear pool within a few days and won't be enslaved to expensive sequestrants. Who knows, may still have to - I can't seem to find much info on dealing with iron this way.

Any info or advice, welcome!

As far as I know, this is the first experience anybody has had with this around this forum--keep us posted on how it's going, we all are continually learning!!

Janet

Will do Janet! Wish me luck! We're going into week 3 battling this iron issue - this was second-to-last resort! :o)

Wow, this is a great experiment! I love when I hear of something new that can be used to battle staining:) Keep us informed. You can keep your makeshift filter around to use for all of your refilling - what a brilliant idea. Keep us informed!

Marie - it's working!!!

We could definitely see bottom at our last round of rinsing the batting from the homemade filter. We saw some 'pools' of debris at the bottom of the pool, so we ran the vac for a little while - and clearly saw a path everywhere the vac went - so there was some level of settling. We're so excited (silly, I know - but we felt truly defeated on Thu and Fri).

We still have a greenish-hued pool - but it's faded since this am (the hue). There are no visible signs of brown in the pool, but the homemade filter batting keeps coming out brown!

So, I think the green (turquoise) a lot of us see when clearing metals is actually lesser-levels of iron. I won't stand by that statement for sure until the hue is gone and the batting comes out clear. I continue to add bleach - esp since we had a crazy T-storm today and it added about 1/4" of water to our pool (better than coming from our well!!!).

I'm so excited to see the pool tomorrow morning.

Oh, and we changed the homemade filter material to 'traditional quilt' poly fil from Walmart (a rolled 'blanket' of batting), rather than the loose fiber poly fil we were using- because too much of that stuff was escaping and getting into places it shouldn't be - but it DID work. The other downside of the loose fiber was, the second you lifted it from the pool (whether in the bucket or loose in the skimmer), it would immediately drain the iron right back into the pool. With the quilt poly, you still have to lift your bucket out and away from the pool fast - you don't have to be AS quick as you do with the loose poly.

Eager to see the pool tomorrow am - and I'm going to bring another sample to the store tomorrow to find out how much the iron level fell (and hopefully the pH, too). Cross your fingers for me.

I'll keep everyone posted. It's so much cheaper than sequestrants - and takes about the same amount of time!

You know what they say --- necessity is the mother of invention!

Good point!!

Here's hoping I don't humiliate myself on the forum with this! But, you know what? If it saves someone else the time, money and frustration of trying it - well then, I saved someone time, money and frustration!

But how cool would it be for this to actually work???

Gotta say - it's looking good! I can't imagine I have anything left in suspension after almost a week of not using sequestrants and adding as much bleach/cal hypo that I have since Thu.

My husband is calling me "Pool Macgyver" HA!

Wow! That's exciting! What I like about this idea is it has very little downside--cost of a bucket and batting, and maybe a little lint in the pool. It's not actually capable of harming your pool.

I have an idea: If the bucket with the holes and batting are small enough, before you pull it out of the water, immerse it in a bigger bucket or small plastic garbage pail, then pull them both out. That way the brown iron impregnated water will flow into the outer bucket and not back into the pool.

I love this forum:)

Another update!

Woke up this am to a clear pool! No exaggeration! It's clear!!! The quilt batting was FILTHY from running about 12 hrs. We have sediment on the bottom of the pool - some of the loose poly fil we started with in the homemade filter, a few rocks and brown sediment, which must be iron.

Took a water sample to the pool store:

CL/FC - 5
TA - 140
pH - 7.8
CYA - 0
CA - 70
and... drum roll please...
Iron - 0

We still have the homemade filter in the pool and there is still some staining on the batting - so we're going to run it all day again.

I think I am going to stick to a statement I made yesterday that the green/turquoise color some of us metal-heads are seeing when things start to clear is low-level iron. Because I have no green today and my CL level wasn't at shock level to kill any potential algae (does that make sense to the experts?).

Oh pool store said to try 4 more lbs of cya - because the 3 I added last Thu still aren't showing up (made sense to me - and I don't think I've seen a natural alternative (please advise if there is) - I also bought calcium (well, Balance) because of the same reason and mine is low (?) Again, please advise. And I'll add Muratic Acid for the pH and baking soda for the TA.

This is so crazy, guys - I can't believe it worked!!!

Yes, I agree that the greenish tint to the water is metals - think of it this way, when the metals are yellowish brown and the pool water is blue, yellow and blue make green:D I see this in my pool all the time, that's how I know to add more sequestering agent. When my pool is clear but not quite blue blue it is because something is going on:rolleyes: As for the cya - sometime when using a lot of sequestering agent it uses up cya. I am not a chemist, and I don't know the reason, but I do know this from experience. It can also use up a lot of calcium too. Just as I said, every time you add something to the water it changes something else:( Once the water is balanced (and metal free) it is easy to keep it up, but sometimes getting there is a big pain. Everyone's water reacts differently, because what is in the water is different than anyone else. This is why when you learn to care for your own pool it makes it easier - because the pool store is giving out information on a all encompassing situation, as well as selling chemicals. Keep up the good work, and keep us informed - I love your idea!

I can't believe my iron is 0.

Of course, with all the backwashing this weekend, I need to fill up again (from the iron-laden well), but I'm going to do it today while the homemade filter continues to run, and as an added precaution, my husband filled another bucket with quilt batting and I'm going to attach a prefilter to the hose and stick the filter into the batting bucket and hang that in the pool as it fills.

We did a test in a bucket on Fri where we double-filtered the fill water (hose prefilter and Slime Bag over that) and then added bleach to the filled bucket - turned brown.

I can't believe how cheap and easy the successful course of action was. A bucket and sump pump that we already had, $16 worth of quilt batting (no longer suggest the loose stuff - makes a mess) and 72 hours!

Marie -

I have a question for you...

Now that we've removed all the iron from the pool using the makeshift filter, we were left with some liner/skimmer staining. I read the ascorbic/citric acid treatment sticky - but you suggest immediately following up with a sequestrant. Do you think I could run my sump pump/batting filter during the ascorbic acid treatment in order to trap and remove the metals rather than having to sequester them?

Hi,

I just noticed something I've been wondering about: You said you were adding calcium and you said you have stains on your liner.

So..if you have a vinyl liner are you aware that you do NOT need calcium in your water? Calcium's only for concrete/gunite/plaster pools.

POOLSTORED!! Didn't use it yet - I'll return it. Does Calcium contribute to staining (it is a metal).

My staining is light - but now that I'm clear - it's visible!

Think my jerry-rigged filter would work rather than a sequestrant to catch the metals as they come off the lining/fixtures?

Your batting is catching fine particles of iron and rust (iron oxides). What kind of filter do you have? I suspect that a DE filter or a high-quality cartridge filter would be able to catch such particles as well, but perhaps not a sand filter.

There is a commercial product you can buy called The Slime Bag™ which filters down to around 1 micron so even finer than a DE filter. Sounds like you've found something homemade that works quite well, at least for metal particles.

Metal sequestrants hold metal ions suspended into solution. They don't do anything for fine particulate matter which is what you are filtering. No physical filtration will remove metal ions -- they are dissolved in solution just like salt dissolves in water. So even though you have removed most or all the particulate metal solids from your pool, you could still have metal ions and should have your water tested for iron. If it measures high (say, more than 0.3 ppm) then you should still use a metal sequestrant to prevent staining.

Some people have talked about intentionally shocking and raising the pH of iron-filled pool water in order to intentionally create rust that can then get caught in a filter, but such a process can also stain pool surfaces so it's not a foolproof method.

Richard

Good Morning, Chem Geek.

I'm happy to hear from you.

I actually have a sand filter and I've been using DE in it throughout this process and it does capture a decent amount of iron. The makeshift filter and the sand filter usually produces the same level of staining when we clean/backwash them (like this am, the staining in both was a lighter yellow/orange after filtering for 12 hours with a visibly crystal clear pool).

Yesterday at the pool store, my iron registered 0 - but clearly there was still iron in there as we cleaned both filters twice since my store testing and they were stained both times, so I'm not sure what kind of range their "0-reading" has (if that makes sense).

Right now I'm doing an ascorbic acid treatment (in the circulation phase until tomorrow am), at which point I'll be adding DE to the sand filter and putting the makeshift filter in as I slowly add chlorine (bleach). I imagine if staining returns during that process (esp since I haven't quite figured out what 'bringing it up slowly' means), that will tell me if I need to continue with sequestrants. I think on any level, though I certainly reduced the amount I'd need - no? It's just nice to see bottom for more than a day!

Chem Geek -

Forgot to mention, that we had been using the Slime Bag for a while early on. When we were using sequestrants and got the pool clear/green, then I tried to bring CL level up 'slowly' at that point and went right back to opaque brown.

I also used the Slime Bag to filter our fill water along with a hose pre filter (put Slime Bag over both), then filled a bucket and poured bleach in the bucket - turned brown.

did you try a metal out before using your shock or chlorine? if so did it still turn brown, b/c i just dumped my pool in hopes to refill w/ homemade hose filter. (coffee filters, fish tank filter and socks). then to apply metal out. Wait a couple days then start from scratch with chemicals?

Hi Pool Girl.

We just moved into this house in April - and in May, we opened the pool. The previous owners only left 1.5' of water in the pool (it's a 24' round AG pool and is about 4' deep). I filled the pool, from my well (hadn't come across the PoolForum at this point).

The woman I hired to help me open it and show me how to have a pool, shocked it and it turned 'coffee-with-a-little-cream' brown. I purchased $140 worth of sequestrants, and after about 3 or 4 days, the water was clear with a tinge of green (metals). Then we were urged to sanitize the pool by bringing up the CL slowly. Not knowing what that meant, I put 6 gals of bleach in, and 2 days later, the water actually looked darker than it did the first time it was shocked (now it was a 'coffee-with-very-little-cream brown). When I had my CL levels tested that morning, my CL level was 3 (low-end range for normal swimming conditions).

We were ready to dump it or tear it down (seriously) - then something made us try this homemade filter and my water has been clear for 2 days now, with a CL level of 5 (the high side of normal swim-ready levels).

Right now I'm doing a stain removal treatment and my CL is very low, then I have to add CL again, so we'll see what happens then (but I'm going to have our homemade filter in as I do it).

I also purchased a hose prefilter as well as a Slime Bag that I put over it and we used that prior to adding the 6 gals of bleach (we kept having to fill due to all the backwashing we had to do to our sand filter during the sequestrant stage.

But as our homemade filter kept working, I added bleach every day prior to this treatment without any color change.

We just have the Intex vinyl 15 x 36 pool and after filling from my well, with an rv water filter attached I thought it was pretty clear. Then I waited a day, and it was orange. I started filtering with poly batting in the included skimmer, and put a white cotton sock filled with poly batting on the return end after it filters. I changed and rinsed clean the poly and sock for several days. Then I added 4 cups of bleach and it went all ice tea looking again. I have filtered the last two days, and my water is clear, crystal! I will run a test kit and add more bleach if needed and hope it doesnt turn brown again, but it really works! Its been raining for two days, so will wait till that stops to continue. thanks for 5 gallon bucket, poly fill idea!!

Isn't it crazy?

We filtered from Friday at 6:30 pm to this am at 6:00. We're doing a stain treatment right now and want the acid to circulate for 24 hours before we start filtering.

Since this treatment will free some more metals into the water, after the 24-hr mark, I'm going to keep CL down, polyquat 60 up and continue to filter until batting is clean, then add bleach (and everything else needed for balanced pool) to swim levels. I'm actually looking forward to swimming on Saturday. Saturday will be about 3.5 weeks since we started our iron battle.

I'll keep you posted! Please do the same.

did anyone try using the metal out first? before adding the chlorine. I just spoke to a lady i work with and she said she ran into that w/ her pool the first year. she added the metal out stuff. let the pool sit w/o filtering. then vacuumed the bottom. she said as long as she used that she didn't have a prob. She said that she also has a hot tub and now uses that before she adds chlorine and doesn't have a problem. I just want to know if her story is just a fluke or if anyone tried this metal out stuff 1st before anything?

From what I'm understanding, anyone who needs the sequestrant has to use it before chlorinating. Adding the chlorine just has to be done slowly, so as not to take the metals back out of suspension. You also have to use sequestrant any time you need to shock, then raising your chlorine slowly again. I've not been past the chlorinating stage, so I don't know about maintenance dosing with sequestrants. You may be best off starting a new thread, so the metals expert, Marie (Mbar) can read it and advise you best. She's dealt with metals in her pool for 10 years and offers a lot of guidance and support through the process.

The Slime Bag isn't going to help very much with the fill water since metal ions will slip through all physical filtration material. Basically, you got a lot of metal ions in your pool initially and then when you shocked the pool the higher chlorine level and higher pH caused the metal iron ions to form iron oxides which are solid and can get filtered out through your homemade batting and the DE in a sand filter (and a slime bag, if you were to use it).

There are ion exchange filters for fill water, similar to whole house water softeners, that can remove the metal ions, but for filling a whole pool this can be impractical if not very expensive. There are also some services that provide Reverse Osmosis water treatment that can also remove most everything that is in the water, including metal ions.

I suppose one could develop some sort of chlorine plus high pH system for fill water to precipitate and capture metals and then add acid afterwards to restore the pH, but I haven't heard of anyone doing that.

Richard

Hi Richard.

That makes sense about the fill water. I think I saw the ion exchange system. But if that was what I was looking at - it was $1400.

Do Flocculants work similarly to the reaction between the CL and the metals? Knock everything out and filter them?

I have a chem question for you, Richard. I'm doing the ascorbic acid treatment right now. It still has to circulate until tomorrow (Wed) at 6:00 am, then we filter. I added a bottle of sequestrant as per the instructions after adding the acids. Would our makeshift filter catch sequestered metals as well? Doesn't sequestrant make the particles "larger" so a filter can catch them (or is that chelators)?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by newpoolgirl

did anyone try using the metal out first? before adding the chlorine.

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Metal Out is one brand of metal sequestrant--that is what labdi01 has been adding to her pool all this time. The purpose of the Metal out is to keep the metals in suspension in the pool water so that higher levels of chlorine and pH don't allow them to drop out of solution and stain the pool/water.

Janet

There are some products that claim to turn metals into salts so they can be filtered out, but I don't believe them. There really is no way to get metals out of the water unless you can turn them into something solid and then vacuum them out, and I don't know any way to practically do it. I would love to hear of any way it can be done:)

thank you. i am glad i came here because the pool places around me have no clue what to tell me. One said they never heard of chlorine turning water brown and tried to sell other chemicals. This is my first forum and my first pool. i'll try posting a thread. Thanks again.

The flocculants help consolidate solid particles that might be too small for the filter to catch, but that does not include metal ions.

As Janet said, the metal sequestrants hold the metal ions into solution, essentially making them so they won't react when the pH rises and won't form solids that can stain. There are some products that claim to remove metals in the filter, but they don't seem to work reliably.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by newpoolgirl

One said they never heard of chlorine turning water brown and tried to sell other chemicals

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NO!!! :eek: I am shocked!! :rolleyes:

Glad you found us, newpoolgirl! :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by labdi01

I have a chem question for you, Richard. I'm doing the ascorbic acid treatment right now. It still has to circulate until tomorrow (Wed) at 6:00 am, then we filter. I added a bottle of sequestrant as per the instructions after adding the acids. Would our makeshift filter catch sequestered metals as well? Doesn't sequestrant make the particles "larger" so a filter can catch them (or is that chelators)?

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I have been reading your posts and I am about ready to get my backhoe out and fill the pool in...... Would it be possible for you to post a picture of your setup?

Regards,
Chris

Unfortunately, unless she becomes a subscriber, she won't be able to post a picture.

In addition to metal sequsterants it has been found that chitosan based water clarifiers (so called "natural clarifiers") can also combine with metal ions in the water and in theory remove them when the clarifier clumps and is filtered out. How well this works I really don't know but it is documented that chistosan does help removed metals, particularly copper, in waste water.