Metal in pool

[newpoolgirl]

I don't mean to barge in, but what they are telling you is correct. if your levels go out of wack. you will be back to square 1. I was having this issue since may. Tried metal out, but what my pool store wasn't telling me was to keep my levels balanced. I did find a product to clear my brown water since i have a small cartridge filter with my 5,000gal intex pool that doesn't do much. It's called pool stain treat. it's a sequestrant and chelator. Don't ask me what that means, but after 2 days of using this my water cleared,and the cartridge filter actually caught all the brown(washed it out 4 times). I bought this product on my own as a last resort before I took down the pool. Called the company that makes it(united chemical corp.) And just like the above posts the company told me that even with this, if my levels are off, bam, back to brown water. They said for this chemical to work you levels have to be balanced. This site is the best one that I have found out there. Thank you and keep up the good work.

[waterbear]

Pool stain treat is just oxalic acid. It works exactly the same as ascorbic acid but is more toxic. (Citric acid also works the same.) You are just lucky the stain reformed in your filter and not in the pool. A sequestrant is still needed.

United chemical sell a lot of different products and makes a lot of claims for them. When you realize that the majority of their products are just soduim bromide (Pool stain Treat and the stain spotting bags being an exception since they are oxalic acid) and you look at the nonsense they call the Hamilton Index that they used to promote (and still do with their water balance recommendations) then you have to look at their claims for the products with a grain of salt.

I am not saying these products do not work, in fact they do (some better than others). It's just the marketing hype does not quite agree with the reality of what is really happening.

[newpoolgirl]

so even though this product(oxalic acid) states that it is a sequestrant, it is not? i know nothing about pool lingo. The only thing i do know is that i used 32 oz of metal treat(tricurboxylic acid/phophonbutane) , and also 32 oz of metal out(not sure what's in this). With both of these i've had no luck. since i used the oxalic acid product do i still have to add more of a metal out product?
since i've added the oxilic acid my #'s are:
TH:100 (this never changed since beginning)
FC: 0
pH:7.2
TA: 240(highest strip goes) can't seem to get down
CYA: 30 -can't get this up. used 4lbs of stabilizer and cond. last week.

5,000 gal pool

[waterbear]

First thing, get rid of the strips and get a decent test kit. I would recommend investing in a Taylor K-2006. It will be money well spent in the long run.
As far as the Pool Stain Treat, it is actually a reducing agent. I chemically transforms the insoluble colored metal stains into colorless and soluble metal ions that go into solution.
The metal is still in your pool and can redeposit as stains if your water chemistry gets a bit out of line or your water can become colored if you shock the pool.
Adding a metal sequestrant such as the metal out makes the metal ions in solution non reactive chemically so they are much less likely to deposit back as stain or color the water. However, sequestrants do break down and need to be reapplied on a regular (usually monthly) basis. If not your stains are very likely to return.


So to deal with metal stains you need two products:

1) a reducing agent such as ascorbic, citric , or oxalic acid to reduce the metal to a colorless, soluble form (Ascorbic is the least toxic, oxalic is the most toxic but relatively cheap.)

2) a sequestrant to keep the metal in solution and inactivated chemically so it does not react with pool chemicals to deposit as stain, precipitate out (rusty water) or oxidize into a colored form (green water for copper, yellow water for iron, purple water for manganese). Most of the sequestrantss on the market are based on HEDP (phophonates or phosphonic acid derivatives) and are the most effective. There are also ones based on EDTA that do not raise phosphate levels (really a non issue anyway!) but they don't work as well as the first type. However there are other chemicals used as sequestrants and chelating agents in pools so YMMV. (Also all chelating agents are sequestrants but not all sequestrants are chelating agents. The difference lies in the shape of the molecule and nothing more.)

Also, stain removal is more effective at lower pH so you might need acid and since most stain removers destroy chlorine (and you cannnot shock because that will bring the stains back) you will most likely need some polyquat 60 to keep algae at bay until the chlorine is holding again.

Don't forget that calcium is also a metal so sequestrants are also useful when there is very high calcium levels in the water.

Hope this info is useful.

[newpoolgirl]

thank you !

[newpoolgirl]

hello again. i hate to bother you but since i have added the pool stain treat, until yesterday, my water has been clear. My chlorine level has not been showing on my test kit. bought a different kind and it was showing FC at 1. I was using 3" chlorine tab in floater. I was happy with that since my water was clear. My husband decided to listen to someone at work about if our chlorine was low we could have bacteria and all get sick. Without me knowing he added shock, then the next day chlorine granules to our pool. I have no clue how much. Needless to say, brown water again. I took my water to get tested since the colors that showed on my strips didn't match some of the colors on the container.
pH 8
FC 5.1
TC 5.1
Alk 140
CYA 60
Copper 0.13
Iron 0.17(was 0.9 last time got it tested)
Hardness 140
Phosphate 300

My question is that if my Iron level is 0.17 would that be the cause of my brown water or something else? My water is the darkest it has ever been, but i'm assuming that's b/c my chlorine level and pH is the highest it's ever been, right? Also, I did add calcium. The pool store told me that i should add it b/c they told me that over time being low my liner could become brittle. They told me to add 2Lbs for my 5000gals. I don't even think I added a pound b/c i wanted to go slow with that. Could that have added to the brown, also? I was doing so good. I kept my pH at 7.2 and chlorine at 1 with that floater. I have never added any more cya to my water since i setup my pool. Why did my pH rise to 8, and cya go up to 60 since he added the shock and chlorine? The only cya i added was when i opened my pool a month ago, and my shock or chlorine does not contain anything like that.I did add the pool stain treat again last night. I guess since my water is real dark it will take longer to clear? Also, I know this could bring my pH down. If it doesn't bring it back close to 7.2 how long should I wait before I buy something to bring it down?

[mbar]

What kind of pucks are you using? If they are tri-chlor then they contain cya and will bring your cya up pretty fast. With a cya of 60 you want your chlorine to be at 5ppm for your low number, so your chlorine level is good. The high ph will cause the metals to fall out of solution. Just taking your ph down should help. What I don't understand is if he put in a lot of chlorine, then it should have come in at higher than 5.1. Maybe you were fighting the beginning of an algae break, but you don't measure any combined chlorine, so I don't know if he put in all that much. I don't understand how your ph is so high unless the pucks you are using contain calcium instead of cya. In order to have a puck the chlorine has to have something to bind on to, so it is either cyanuric acid (cya) or calcium (calhypo). The only way to get chlorine without these is plain bleach which only has salt in it. If there is no chlorine in the water, then you will not have any stains, because there will be nothing to make the metals fall out of solution, but I am afraid your husband is right - you need chlorine at a level to get rid of bacteria (which you can have with clear water). You don't even see an algae break out until there is enough to make the water cloudy. You will find the balance with your pool - you may just need some more sequestering agent to hold the metals in suspension. Sequestering agents should lower the ph, if not then add some acid. You are better off to keep your ph on the low side. Chlorine levels can be kept on the low side, but for a cya of 60 you need a minimum of 5. Your shock level would be 20 - if you keep up with the water you should not have to shock. It is a matter of keeping the right amount of sequestering agent in the water for the levels of chlorine you need. Feel free to ask any questions, I know it's frustrating, but it is doable (is that a word?).

[aylad]

The fact that the chlorine and pH were raised is probably what caused the iron to precipitate and give you brown water. We know how the chlorine got that high....but also keep in mind that high chlorine tends to give falsely high pH results, so I don't really trust your pH result until the chlorine comes back down some.

What is the ingredient in the "shock" and the "chlorine granules" that he added? If it was dichlor, which I think it probably was, it added some CYA. Also, the trichlor pucks that you are using add a great deal of CYA over time, plus you added a huge dose of CYA from startup, so that's why your CYA is suddenly so high. With a CYA that high, you do normally need to run higher chlorine levels to keep the water clean.

You don't need to increase your calcium in a vinyl pool, so if you haven't added the other pound, I wouldn't. Calcium is necessary in plaster/gunite/concrete pools to keep the water from leaching calcium out of the concrete and making it brittle. In a vinyl pool, there is no concrete to protect. Brittleness in a liner is normally a result of sun damage, and/or out of whack water chemistry, not calcium deficiency. Mbar recommends a little calcium in her pool to help with the metals staining the water, but you do not need to raise it any higher than it is. That's a pool store thing--I think they tell you that you need calcium in a vinyl pool because that's what they've been told....and it doesn't normally make any discernable difference, but it's not needed.

Janet

Edit: I see that Marie was typing at the same time I was--I will always defer to her on the metals front!!