New Pool Owner With High Iron Manually Removing Iron

[aylad]

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

[labdi01]

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

[mbar]

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!

[labdi01]

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!

[Watermom]

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

[labdi01]

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!

[CarlD]

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.