New Pool Owner With High Iron Manually Removing Iron

[labdi01]

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.

[dpeterson9]

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!!

[labdi01]

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.

[newpoolgirl]

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?

[labdi01]

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.

[chem geek]

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

[labdi01]

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?

[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)?

[aylad]

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

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

[mbar]

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