. . . membership updated.

An ionizer doesn't add iron, ever. It adds copper, and sometimes, silver or zinc as well.

Copper and silver cause pools stains. Copper causes green hair.

Copper DOES kill algae; it does NOT kill bacteria reliably or quickly. Silver kills bacteria, eventually, but does not affect viruses.

Consequently, pools with ionizers tend to be algae-free, but stained. They are also usually unsanitary. If you swim ONLY with family, that's probably OK, since you tend to already share infections with family members. But if you swim with non-family members, you have a good chance of sharing brand new (to you) infections and diseases.

Some people like them. If you have (a) dark hair, (b) don't mind stains, and (c) swim only with really healthy people . . . an ionizer might be a good idea.

The problem is, that the ionizer sales sleaze-balls don't tell potential customers any of this, so ionizers get installed on pools with twin platinum blonde girls in the family, with predictable and unhappy results, etc.

PF is my site, and I'm probably not as against them as some here. I believe in letting people buy what they want, as long as it's an informed decision; after all my preferred place to swim is in the ocean or in mountain streams and rivers around Chattanooga and NONE of those places are sanitary!

But I don't want to support Cu/Ag ionizers here, because (a) it confuses the chemistry beyond belief for new pool owners and (b) we end up wasting time fighting all the sales lies that ionizer owners bring with them. (We'd rather wait till they are sick of the things, and no longer believe that stuff. )