Hi Kris,

As far as the filter removing "clear iron", I don't know the answer to that one--but I will certainly ask Ben (the owner of this forum) to take a look at this thread and I'm sure he can help you out there.

As far as the Taylor test kit, it's a more complete one than the one you got from WalMart. All of the tests with the exception of Chlorine work the same way. However, the chlorine testing is much different...with the WalMart kit, you add 5 drops of reagent to pool sample to achieve a yellow color that you match to a scale reading up to 5 ppm. Many people have a problem with accurately reading the color comparator, and many people need to maintain higher chlorine levels than 5 ppm--in fact, everybody that is shocking the pool needs higher levels than that! It also only measures total chlorine, which is actually a combination between Free chlorine (the amount of chlorine in your pool available to fight stuff in the water) and Combined chlorine (the amount of chlorine that is currently tied up with fighting stuff in your water). Being able to distinguish combined chlorine (CC) is at times very helpful, and at other times a requirement. The Taylor kit works by adding a scoop of powder to the pool sample, making it turn pink. You add drops of reagent until sample is clear, multiplying count x 0.5 to get free chlorine level, then add 5 drops of a second reagent. If it doesn't change color, you know you have 0 CC. If it changes to pink, you add the first reagent drop by drop until it goes clear again, and multiply by 0.5 to get the CC. Going from pink to clear is easier to accurately gauge than comparing shades of yellow for many people, being able to measure CC is important for many situations, but the ultimate advantage in this method is that it gives you accurate testing of chlorine up to 50 ppm.

Regarding stabilizer, yes, you will need to add stabilizer to the water to help protect your chlorine from the sun. We recommend that people target 30-40 ppm, then add about 1/2 the product required, because it's much easier to add more later to increase it than to overshoot it and have to drain/refill,especially after they've gotten a water problem resolved! If you have a skimmer, you can put it in through there where it will go to the filter and sit until dissolved, which can take up to 4-5 days. You can't backwash/clean your filter in that time, though, without washing it out, so another method is to put it in an old tube sock and suspend it in front of a return until it dissolves. No need to test for it for about a week, though, because it takes a long time to dissolve and show up in tests.

I would leave the flocculants alone in your case, because I don't think they'll help. Flocculants are used to make small particles stick together to make bigger particules that the filter can catch or that will sink to the bottom to be vacuumed up. In the case of iron in solution in the water, I don't think this is going to be applicable to you, but again, I'll ask Ben to take a look and offer whatever suggestions he can.

Hope this helps!

Janet