Stains no quite coming out with Vitamin C, maybe not enought POP?

[dmcwhinnie]

I have been reading all the posts over the last week, and finally got brave enough to try and remove the stains from the pool.

Pool Details:
IG Plaster, 15,000 Gal

I lowered pH to 6.8 (I kinda missed the 7.0 mark). Got rid of almost all the chlorine.. there was a little there, but it is definately gone now.

Then came 1 pound of Vitamin C.

And then 1 bottle of Metal out.

Not much happend after a couple hours, so I added another pound of Vitamin C, and a bottle of metal out.

It has been about 18 hours now and the stains are definately lighter, but I was under the impression they would be pretty much gone right away. Am I just impatient, or should I be doing something different?

Maybe I should add some more Vitamin C or Metal out? I didn't want to add it all at once, hoping to do it incrementally to I wouldn't have too much. Maybe that is where I went wrong.

Any thoughts and suggestions are appreciated..

David.

[mbar]

Keep the ph low, add some more ascorbic acid - try to add it where the stains are most prevelent - You should be ok with the sequesterer, but if yo have more add another half bottle, more is better than not enough, and it depends on how much staining you had - turn the filter to cirulate for about 2 hours, then back to filter. If you have extra ascorbic acid, it will only filter out - so don't worry about that. Sometimes it's hard to have patience - but you should see all of the stain go away with the intial dose of ascorbic acid, if it didn't that means that there wasn't enough of aa or sequesterer. The only time it's better to wait is if the stain is new - then you take the ph down add sequestering agent and wait to see if they disappear. Welcome to the forum, feel free to ask any other questions you may have.

[dmcwhinnie]

I added some more ascorbic acid, and some more sequesterer. It seems to help, or maybe it is just my eyes. But I get the impression from comments it should be instantaneous.... I'll know better as the sun gets lower, with no shade in the yard, it is just glaring right now and hard to see the bottom of the pool.

You mention to just circulate, but not filter the water. My plumbing is such that it always runs through the filter. Is this unusual? I have a cartridge filter, so I guess I could take the filters out??

I'll keep it running, and see how it goes.

Thanks for your help.

David.

[waterbear]

IMHO, 1 lb of ascorbic acid will treat 10000 gal...therefore you needed 1.5 lbs initially. Most of the metal sequesterants I have seen also treat 10000 gal with 32 oz so you would have needed 1.5 qts. initially.
Depending on the stain it might take a few days of filtering to remove all of it. If your water is cloudy that is usually a good sign.
Did you test the stain with a vitamin C to see if it would remove it? Not all stains will be removed by only ascorbic acid...sometimes more involved procedures are needed.

[dmcwhinnie]

The interesting thing is the water isn't cloudy. I am starting to think that the stain isn't completely treatable with AA. I have ordered a stain test kit, and it is on they way. .. I guess I should have done that first.

[waterbear]

I am going to assume you ordered the Jack's Magic stain kit. It is a good one and the products work but they are expensive. Some of their stain treatments can acutally take weeks to complete so you might also need a jumbo bottle of POP (Pool Owner Patience)! You never did reply if you tested the stain with a vitimen C tablet? If that cleared the stain where it sat then ascorbic acid WILL work. If it didn't then you might need oxalic acid or even more drastic measures.

[dmcwhinnie]

Well, I don't have any vitamin C around the house.... so I can't say for sure. I did order Jack's Stain kit so we will see what it says. If it may take weeks, then I guess I will get the water back to balanced, and then tackle the stains once I know what I am dealing with.

[waterbear]

check out this post
http://www.poolforum.com/pf2/showpos...38&postcount=7

[dmcwhinnie]

I put a trichlor puck on the stains, and it definately lightened them. So I guess based on the other thread, my next steps are to get the water back in shape, and raise the chlorine to 30ppm? Should I proceed to get my water back in shape in all aspects CYA, pH, Alk, etc. and then raise the chlorine, or should I just go about raising Chlorine? I've ordered Ben's Test kit to get me started in proper water chemistry.

I guess the advice, "just get some test strips and just watch your pH once in a while and keep the chlorine just high enough so it doesn't turn green", I recieved from others wasn't quite enough.

[mbar]

I would get my ph up to 7 - 7.6, then add the chlorine. You can get a bad reading on ph (your ph will test much higher than it actually is) if your chlorine is really high. After the chlorine is high, you should see the stains start to lighten - it may take a while. It is hard to advise when we don't know what your numbers are - because the level of chlorine you need depends on the amount of cya you have in your water. since your pool is plaster, you also need to have calcium in your water at a level of 200-400. You need to have your alkalinity between 80-120. If you have a very acidic pool, your plaster can get eaten away, and your equipment can too. Just using test strips and worrying about ph was very bad advice you got - I'm so glad that you found this forum, the best thing that ever happened to me was to take control of my own pool, and this forum helped me to do it, and it will help you too. I recommend that you get a good test kit, the one sold on the Pool Solutions web site is the one most of us on this site use. However, there are others that work too. I am very happy with the kit I got here. Hope this helps, feel free to ask any questions you may have.