Excessive Iron in Swimming Pool Water p.4

Follow up - Okay so it took four days but we are in swim mode FINALLY! I wanted to come back and post exactly what we did so anyone with our type and size pool could use this. I think time varies based on pool size/type, pump size/type. I also think the sock works great but for smaller pools as we found after about 8 hrs it wasn't pulling a large amount of metals.

We have an Intex Ultra Frame above ground 16 x 48 round (5,100 gallons of filled well water) with the upgrade pump of 2500 gph and a floater for chlorine tabs. We have a Hayward Dive Dave water bug vacuum. As I said before the water was AWFUL and we were literally desperate. Here's how we did it.

First remove your chlorine tablets from the pool. Your gonna raise your chlorine levels and don't need to make it dangerously high. Remember chlorine burns off in heat and sun so doing it this way will add one day to your time to use pool so levels can lower out! Do this in the sun and heat because that helps burn the chemicals off while still knocking iron and copper out! (Normally you don't do it in the heat and sun because you WANT to keep your chemicals useful but if your on this board looking for help then normally doesn't apply to you now does it?). Next vacuum your pool (1 hr. should be fine for starters)and rinse all pool hoses and backflush your pump.

Any dollar store sells white cotton hand towels for like $3 a 5 pack. Unless you have good cotton towels you can sacrifice go buy a pack. Get yourself (3) 1 lb. bags of shock DON'T USE superstore generics because most of these discount stores shock have fillers. You need a minimum of 45% so check your bag! Get some PH Up - I recommend Pro Team. (Chances are you have all of this from doing like we did and trying every chemical combination known to man to fix your problem.)Get a few of your husbands tube socks for sacrificing he can thank you later :)

Stretch a tube sock over your skimmer basket and place into the skimmer holder with the toe part tucked down. Change this out and rinse daily. It won't pull much junk but it helps.

Take a filter and cut all the paper off, wrap a white cotton towel around the plastic core and squeeze the top and bottom (blue plastic) parts back to the tube they will be loose - that's ok! Place this homemade filter back into your pump making sure the "core hole" is not blocked with the towel so you have good water flow. Refill your pump with water like you normally would after backflushing. Add 1/2 lb shock (basically for whatever size pool add HALF the normal dosage!) This is going to turn the water terrible colors but it is knocking those metals out of suspension. Run your pump non stop.

Every 4 hours or so turn off your pump and rinse the towel. If the water in the pump is brown flush your pump briefly to allow that discolored water to NOT circulate back into your pool. At night we just made sure a clean towel was inserted for overnight. I would have several towels handy because if yours pulls the crud mine did the towel is good for about 2 uses. After a full 24 hrs add another 1/2 dosage of shock. Again this will knock more metals into your pool make the water ugly and your going to think OMG what have I done it's still dark water...don't panic! Vacuum for 4-6 hours this helps pull water from the bottom of your pool and helps with circulating the junk. Do this for days 1 and 2.

On the third day NO SHOCK but do add PH up until your PH Level is 7.2 -7.6 add in directed dosages in 4 hour increments. Your water may look like its taken a step backwards...again its okay! Keep in mind anything you add to a pool raises chlorine and ph levels. Keep using your towels in the filter through all of this. DO NOT ADD METAL MAGIC! (Metal Magic is designed to crystallize the metals making the water clear but the Intex Pumps ARE NOT designed to filtrate this so you get clear water then back to brown when you use the pool.)

Day four use your towel as a filter but add NOTHING by now your water should be almost clear, (Ours had a very faint yellowish to it) your ph level should be good and your chlorine should be high. Run the pump on the last day 24 hours letting chlorine burn off. Rinsing the towel as needed.

Day five throw away the skimmer basket sock put your skimmer back together like normal. Vacuum for 4 hours again not just to clean but to circulate. Wipe and hose down (DO NOT USE SOAPS OR CLEANERS!) your pump and all of your hoses so metal does not stain or settle into them INCLUDING your vacuum hoses and skimmer basket. Re-introduce your chlorine tablet, set your pump to a normal timer of between 2 and 4 hrs., add your normal paper filter (Type B for us), get your floats and enjoy!

Five days seems like a lot when your fed up but I have to say it did a fantastic job, was super cheap and while we are late into the season for enjoying our pool it certainly was better than the alternative of tearing it down.

For next year we are buying a Metal Filter Trap that attaches to the hose. This came highly recommend. However from what we learned from our pool store be sure if you do that get one that filters down to 1 micron some say 5 microns which WILL NOT get out tiny iron particles. We found them online for 100.00 and when you figure it eliminates the use of a lot of chemicals and frustration we felt it was worth it for the future.

Finally I would like to once again say THANK YOU to the person who started this thread with the most ingenious and cost effective idea I have ever seen!

Hi, Wendy. Thanks for "paying in kind" by sharing your tips.

But I think what everybody would most like to hear from you is how to lose 15 pounds by lying on a raft sunbathing :-)

Regards,

Hi Ted. I lost the 15 pounds by lots of swimming. I know a 12 ft X 36 in pool isn`t all that large to swim in, but I got creative. I'm only 5 ft tall, so the pool seemed large to me lol.
I spend a lot of time in the pool. Mostly sunbathing on my raft in the afternoons reading a book. In the early mornings and evenings I would swim moving my arms and legs constantly. Another benefit of that is that my insomnia is nearly gone now. Plus being in the pool so long I'm not in the fridge/pantry looking for snacks lol.

I also lost weight by picking blackberries on my property, and on my neighbor's driveway walking quite a distance every day. So what I've lost in body weight, I've made up for in blackberries. There are over 15 pounds of blackberries in my freezer right now lol.

A. I am going to try and post some pictures to help everyone understand what's going and how it works. We have well water which is VERY high in iron and manganese, smells like crap and when its used to fill a pool, looks like it smells. I have fought this for three years with my INTEX 18x52" 6200 gallon pool and want to tell everyone the basics of what to do and what not to do. 1.Super chlorinate the pool so your FREE chlorine is in the mid to high range. This takes a lot more than the instructions will say, but it is necessary to oxidize the iron into rust so you can filter. Your pH and alkalinity may be high, ours always is, so you will need a pH- to get it into the "OK" range. It has been my experience that it takes 3-5 x's the amount of super shock to get a free chlorine level at initial filling.
2.Use a sock filled with batting material like pillow stuffing,(crew socks work best, white) and attach to the outflow valve with a rubber band if necessary. 3. Wrap some white washcloths around your filter and secure the washcloths with three rubber bands. one on each end and one in the middle. it will take two washcloths end to end with some overlap to reach around the filter. 4.place some washcloths in the strainer basket loosely or some batting material. Washcloths are easier to rinse clean though. Clean these off at least 3 times a day if you can, the rust will rinse of very easy. 5. In about 3 days you should be able to swim in it, it will be an aqua-green instead of murky brown-green, and in 5 days it should be totally clear. Don't loose hope, and don't spend a bunch of money on "clarifier's" and "rust cleaners" they don't do anything but create a polymer crap that leaves a Grey blue film on your filter that wont rinse out. Plus its a lot of money for nothing. I will see if I can get some pics of the setup for everyone to see. This will work. Use all three points of attack on this rust and it speeds up the process greatly.

A. I have iron-bearing well water at my home. I purchased a 16' x 32' Intex Ultra Frame pool. The pool came with a sand filter and I am using a saltwater chlorine generator. When I first filled the pool, the water was clear; but after running the chlorine generator for 1 cycle the water had a yellow tint which caused the blue bottom of the pool to appear green. I am happy to say that the Intex sand filter does a great job of removing the precipitated iron from the pool. After running the filter for a day, I had to backwash it because it was clogged up with so much iron. The backwash water that came out of the filter was so brown it looked like root beer. Within 3 days the water was clean enough for swimming.
I can't believe all of the responses that I read with people adding chemicals to the water to get rid of the visible iron. In my opinion the only way to get rid of iron from a swimming pool is to chlorinate the water and filter out the iron particles. If you live on iron-bearing water and don't have a sand filter, go buy one. They cost less than $200 and it might end up saving you money in the long haul. The filtration sand is supposed to last at least five years and a 50 lb bag is around $5 per bag, but those paper filters only last a few weeks before needing to be changed and they each cost about $5.

A. I have the worst iron water in the country! Forget buying all the extra chemicals. What you need is a sand filter ... period. The little paper filters that come with the Intex pools just are not made for water with iron in it. You need to spend the extra $400 dollars to get a sand filter ... trust me!
Overnight your water will clear up! Yes, using a flocculant for clumping the metal will help but only if you have a sand filter.
I have a 13'x 48" Intex above ground pool and it uses the sand filter ... beautiful water!

! Just wanted to say thanks for the sock idea. I put a sock over the filter inside the pump and a sock over the out take(where the clean water pumps into the pool). I changed the socks 3 times and in 24 hours my pool is almost Crystal clear. Used a rubber band to hold in place.

! First off, I want to give a sincere, big Thank-You to all of you who contributed to the "poop soup green/brown" colored water in your pool after being filled with well water. If it weren't for all of you, I probably would have taken my quick set 15' by 3 1/2 ' deep ring pool down and said the heck with it. This is what I did and it only took 9 days of faithful homemade filter and T-shirt sleeve covered cartridge changes to get my water crystal clear! :D I took a 2 liter pop bottle and drilled 15-1/4" holes in the bottom of that bottle. I then stuffed it with stuffing from a pillow, (I no longer was using) up to the bottom of the bottle neck. Then I cut a foot and half section of garden hose from the female end. (you want the female end to use) I put the cut end inside the bottle and used Gorilla Tape (better than duct tape) to keep the hose from coming out of the bottle. I then took the female end of the hose and put it into the clean water return. The bottle will sink to the bottom of the pool and that's o.k. The filter cartridge that came with the pool isn't very good at keeping the iron/rust from re-entering the pool, so what I did was cut the sleeve off from a white T-shirt, slid that over the filter cartridge and put a rubber band at the top, middle, and bottom to keep the sleeve on the cartridge. The first 4 days, I changed the pop bottle filter and the cartridge every 2 hours. The next 5 days, I changed the cartridge & pop bottle filter 3 times a day. When I changed them, I rinsed the sleeve, cartridge and pop bottle right away. Run water into the pop bottle until it runs clear, then it's good to go for the next filtering round. It's nice to have an extra filter cartridge, extra t-shirt sleeve and stuffed pop bottle ready to go. Don't forget to keep the balance of the water in check. The water in my pool was VERY bad, but patience, determination, and 9 days later, my pool is 100% crystal clear!! and ready!! Pool & Tiki bar is open, come on over for a dip! Good-Luck to all who are in the same situation I and many of us had been in. Hope this works for any of you suffering with nasty water situation.

! Love living in the country but a pool filled with orange well water is quite the turn off to the kids. Read the suggestions and wanted to go chemical free to start. Tried the white towel trick, which worked, but the best solution...was to run the pump 24/7 and change the filter frequently (every couple of hours if able). In just 3 1/2 days we now have "see the bottom of the pool" clear water with no chemicals. Couldn't believe it. Patience is key.

! HI!
I stumbled across this forum via a Google search of how to fix the brown rusty water in our brand new 15' above-ground Intex pool. I nearly wept with joy when I found these responses and I wanted to send out a HUGE THANK YOU to Karen Snyder - Canton, Ohio (and her husband) for their brilliant idea of the sump pump pillow filter! We've been running it for 24 hours now and our murky brown water (compliments of high iron from our well that we filled the pool with, plus this newbie's addition of chlorine shock) has turned crystal clear blue - with NO CHEMICALS! So THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!

I am posting pictures -- we documented the process!

   
At start (9 PM), and changing the filter next morning

   
About 15 hours later, 18 hours later, and 24 hours & 3 pillow filters later

Thank you all for all your feedback! It gave me hope when I was despairing (and my husband was ready to throw the pool away!)
What we did:
two five gallon buckets, both with 1 1/2 inch holes drilled in the bottom of both sides
Put a working sump pump in one and drill a hole in the top of the bucket for the hose
Put a pillow in the other and drill a hole for the other end of the hose to go thru (we had to rig up a way for the floater to stay up in the sump pump bucket so it would continuously run, but a few zip ties did the trick) Plugged the sump pump in and 24 hours later, we have a clean pool!
Thank you again!!

! Just want to thank those with the sock/towel solution to the rust. It truly works, started the process just over two hours ago and already the pool is clearing up and I have rinsed out the socks twice. Wow! Love a cheap and easy solution. thanks again.

! This thread has saved another pool - albeit a tiny, cheap pool... Several years ago I bought a 14'x42" pop-up pool on clearance at Big 5. It sat in the garage until a few days ago when we finally leveled a spot for it. It took 7 hours to fill from my well (We have no other choice, as we are in rural farmland with no pool services less than an hour away.)

Got the infamous "POOP SOUP" as soon as I chlorinated. So glad I found this site before I tried chemical warfare. Despite what everyone has said here, I was skeptical that socks and batting could cure a problem as bad as mine. Our water softener guy told us we had the highest iron content he had EVER seen. We have to set it at 50-60 grains to make it drinkable in the house. Even the guy at the independent testing lab raised an eyebrow.

Well, after 24 hours it's now a clear green and I can see the bottom of my pool again. Since I only spent $200 on the pool and filter, and because we have a painfully short pool season, there was no way I could justify spending more money on a new filter or accessories to help the process. (We were seriously thinking of just draining it and throwing it away.) But, I did it all with stuff I already had around the house.

I found that my puny little pump couldn't keep up with a washcloth on the intake + t-shirt around the filter + sock over the outflow. I also found it difficult and time consuming to attach the sock around the outflow (It's deeper in the pool than it should be). I ended up just taking the filter out all together, using the washcloth over the intake, and a sock filled with pillow fluff over the outflow.

For the outflow: I found a vacuum cleaner accessory extension tube from my old Oreck minivac, stuffed the batting-filled sock on the end and zip tied it in tightly in place. (The battling had to be packed tightly enough so the tube didn't slide through it.) The other end of the tube slid snugly right into the outflow hole from the inside of the pool! So much easier to prep and insert. Overnight I stuffed an old pillowcase full of batting and zip tied it around the tube because the smaller sock filled up with rust too quickly and I didn't want to get up every few hours to prevent the excess rust from spewing back into the pool. (Gather up all the loose bits of fabric and make sure the batting is balled tight so that the tube doesn't slide right through the batting...)

(The whole time I made sure my pH was in balance and my chlorine was normal to high - to keep the rust out of solution and thereby filterable.)

Total cost? A couple of old pillows, several old white washcloths, a bunch of old white tube socks, two old white pillowcases, and a packet of zip ties. I could see drilling holes in the vacuum cleaner tube to make it filter more efficiently through the batting, but I wanted to still be able to use them with the vacuum later :)

A. Hi Crystal. Hi Silvia

The basic thrust of this thread is that you have to filter the brown rust out of the water, and that it isn't expensive or difficult, but may take a couple of days.

Regards,

A. After two years of battling iron from my well in my pool, I have come to the conclusion that it is best to allow the iron to oxidize (turn red) and then remove by filtering. Trying to keep the iron in solution can be done, but it requires adding and replenishing goop into the pool all summer, causing balance/SWG issues. I now only add salt (SWG system), HCl (pH down), Bleach (as shock), filtration, and a bit of patience to my pool. Clarifiers/flocculants/metal sequestering agents present problems for both my pool and my pocketbook. My rust-red pool runs clear after about 3-5 days of filtering and is crystal clean after 7-10 days. As long as my pool is in balance and free chlorine is stable, I allow my kids to swim. Iron is not hazardous to health as far as I can tell, so there is no reason why the kiddos need to wait two weeks while our pool clears from weak iced-tea to crystal clear. Socks/towels certainly speed the iron removal process, but don't expect results overnight. As long as my pool does not "eat" chlorine, I feel comfortable that green/red water is safe to use for swimming.

A. I have well water that has a high iron level and when we filled our pool the water was very yellow so I added 1 bag of Morton water softener salt to the pool and ran the filter for 24 hours straight cleaning the filter every 4 hours and we have crystal clear water now. I did have to vacuum the bottom of the pool for a small amour of iron that had settled. This is the easiest way with no gadget.

A. I got our pool fairly clean and a little cloudy until I added shock and chlorine and it went brown. We are on a well and the brown-green is caused by all the iron in the water. I took everyone's advice but nothing seems to work. I have resorted to using socks to filter the water from the hose and putting socks in the filter basket and large pieces of cotton batting I found in a dog bed. I also covered the input water with three towels. It really absorbs a lot of rust and should be cleaned within a few hours but I believe this is the process I will stay with and see what I get in a few days.

Thanks for all the posts, they were very helpful. I made a bag out of window screen and stuffed it with pillow stuffing (took one off my bed LOL) and attached it to a sump pump as shown in some other post with a bucket. 24 hours later our pool is crystal clear. No chemicals used at all. Thanks again.

Greg

My man fashioned a filter out of a bucket with a lid, drilled holes, stuffed with fiber fill, attached with a hose to the pump and strapped with tie downs to the above ground pool ladder. Amazing results! One stuffing change after about 12 hours, ran it overnight again and amazingly clear water! So excited to swim in what was once a swamp!

A. I am one to do lots of research and found these postings very helpful. I am also one to try something for a extended period of time before I post results or opinions. The sock and stuffing idea works to an extent but can also burn out your Intex pump.

I have an Intex sand and sun metal frame pool, 13 foot round and 3.6 feet deep. I bought it years ago. This is the third time I was able to use this pool and the first time using it with well water. The sock and stuffing idea worked to an extent. I attached it to the return hose outlet and changed it every two hours. It really helped clean up the water. However, I still had a problem with iron in the water as I found out because my pH, hardness, etc., is out of whack and my chlorine was ate up in a day. My water got cloudy and nothing I did would help it until I upped the chlorine and put the sock back on. Then I put the sock and stuffing on again but this time let stay on overnight for two nights.....my pump burned out. I had to go out and buy a new pump.

I believe and will try next summer, that having a better pump than the Intex kind, a better filter than the Intex kind, and maybe trying the bucket and stuffing idea (maybe reduce strain on the pump a little) might have a better out come than the sock idea. I am really happy to find this site though. I read through all the postings and it has all been helpful. I couldn't find this information anywhere.

A. We filled our 11,000 above ground pool with water from the hose after replacing our liner. The water turned brown like coffee after we added chorine. After reading this forum we concocted a solution that worked really well. We added fluffy pillow stuffing to a white tube sock and stuffed it in our filter basket. We wrung it out and sprayed it off every two hours then four hours, six hours and so on until the water was sparkling clean. Initially, the sock was almost red / rust color after just a few hours and then it became less and less. This took us about two days, but no additional chemicals were needed with really great results! We did have to keep adding chlorine - perhaps this adhoc filter also removed chorine in addition to iron. We've now purchased a filter for our garden hose and have this sock filter as a back up. Good luck!

A. Hi Melanie. That's what this extremely long 4-page thread is all about :-)

But to summarize, here's the deal: your artesian water has iron dissolved in it that is not normally visible to you. When you chlorinate the pool or otherwise treat it, the acidic conditions that allowed the iron to be dissolved can no longer exist, and the iron cannot stay dissolved; rather it precipitates as extremely fine iron/rust particles that won't settle, and which make the water brown.

Aside from using water that doesn't have iron in it, your only two options are to chelate/complex the iron with something similar to iron out (with variable success), or to solve the problem by filtering out the iron. Good luck.

Regards,

A. One solution is to install a greensand filter on the well water. Another is to add Calgon crystals to the water. The polyphosphate will chelate the iron.

A. After shocking our pool and it turning dark brown. Listening to 50 people tell me what to do. I bought Metal Out for $13 bucks. Overnight, pool went from dark brown (couldn't see the bottom) to clean with a green tint. Also my husband got into the pool a hour after I added Metal Out and it didn't hurt him at all. Hope this helps someone.

A. We had the problem with brown pool water when we added chlorine and shock. All the chemicals have turned the pool brown.
A man gave us some ALUMINUM sulphate. We put it in yesterday and all the brown is in the bottom of the pool now. We are going to vacuum the bottom and let it run out of the pool. I put some water in a cut and it is clear finally...

ALUMINUM sulphate is the answer!

Hi Darla. Aluminum sulphate may not always be THE answer, but apparently it can be a great answer as you have discovered, and I'm amazed that no one (including me) had mentioned it earlier. Most water treatment plants use aluminum sulphate. The aluminum goes into solution, driving the iron out of solution. Thanks!

Regards,

I was skeptical on how this was going to work. Thank y'all so much!! I had beautiful lime green water in my Intex 22x52 pool. The pool place kept telling me all my levels were correct (after adding all kinds of chemicals) and I went out and bought the Intex sand pump thinking it was circulation. I found this website (thank you) and tried a sock in the filter basket and a towel over the return. The next morning I had beautiful blue water!! Thank you!

Well I read and read these responses and decided to try the sock idea on our new 18 x48 Intex pool. I put polyfil in an old sock and put it over the outlet and it worked. Got pretty gross with iron in about 3 hours so I took a second polyfil sock and put it in the filter chamber and with washing the filter out every 2 to 3 hours we can see the bottom of the pool. Think we worked our brand new pump to death, but got the iron out the water.