Remove Metal Compounds From Your Fill
Some years back, before the CuLator metal eliminator was available, there were no practical ways of removing metallic compounds from pool fill-water before entering your pool. The only possible way was to treat water inside your pool, which is hard work and expensive to maintain.
CuLator Ultra Power Park is now my best option for this because you can use it in the skimmer or pump basket to remove up to 4 ppm metal compounds from 20,000 gallons of fill-water before entering your pool. If your pool is more than 20,000 gallons, you can increase your parks and use them both in the skimmer and pump basket.
CuLator should work up to 30 days or longer depending on the metal level in your water and is replaceable once worn out.
However, the easiest way to avoid stains in your pool is to avoid filling the water with metals. Before installing your pool, it is important to test your water source for metal content and avoid water sources with metals in it at all costs because maintenance will be relatively hard and expensive in the long run.
Moreover, you need to be careful with the chemicals you add to your pool since copper may find its way in your pool from chemicals such as algaecide or ionizerand eroded pool parts with copper. If you can’t use CuLator for any reason, detailed below are more ways to control metal stains in your pool.
Getting A Water Softener System
Add Metal Sequestrate In Your Pool Water
Metal sequestrate should be the last option to use in a pool because it works differently from metal removers like Metal Magic and Orendas SC-100. Metal sequestrate does not remove metals in your pool water. Still, it naturally binds to the metals, holding metal particles together in your water so that they don’t come out of the solution to react with chlorine when added to your water or when pH levels get too high.
Ideally, regular doses of sequestrants will prevent metal staining when chlorine is added into the water and slowly break down. Therefore, they should be introduced regularly in your pool water to maintain the right level to keep stains away.
The most effective sequestrants are derived from phosphoric acid, and the best in the market today is Pool Mate Metal Out. This product helps prevent discoloration of pool water from iron, silver, manganese, copper, and other metals and minerals that may be present in the water supply.
Pool Mate Metal Out is an excellent general-purpose sequestrant that helps protect plumbing and pool walls from rust, stain, and scale. It should be used for pool openings and closings and throughout the season. For best results, add 1 quart per 10,000 gallons weekly, and you will never have metal stains in your pool.
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How To Clear Metal Stains In A Swimming Pool
When you are finally sure it’s metal staining, you can use ascorbic acid to remove the metal stains from your pool. Follow the guide below to clear metal stains using ascorbic acid.
Step 1: Lower FC Level to 0ppm
Reduce FC level to 0ppm. Reducing your FC is essential to avoid more metal stains while eliminating the stains. Also, the chlorine will eat up most of your ascorbic acid ending up using a lot to clear all the metal stains.
To lower your FC level, you can use chlorine neutralizing agent or drain and refill a portion of your pool water, or wait until FC gets 0ppm naturally. However, waiting for the FC level to drop by itself will take time and you have to add polyquat 60 algaecide in your water to prevent algae while the FC level is at 0ppm.
Step 2: Lower pH Level to 7.2
Ascorbic acid will be ineffective in pH above 7.2, consequently, reduce your pH to 7.2 if higher than that. High pH also causes metal stains and you don’t want more stains while clearing the stains.
You can use pH minus or muriatic acid to lower pH, but remember muriatic acid will lower your alkalinity too and you will have to balance your water when done.
Step 3: Put your Filter on Circulation
You need to put your on circulation so that you speed up the process by allowing water to move around the pool. This will also enable ascorbic acid to work effectively in clearing the stains without letting some out of the pool through the filter.
Step 4: Add Correct Amount of Ascorbic Acid
Super Simple Home Made Filtering
A. Have a good and inexpensive solution that worked for us. Take a white bath towel and hang on the steps to your above ground pool, directly in front of the pump discharge line in the pool. The white towel does catch the rust. Let it hang there for a couple of hours and then remove towel and hose the rust off the towel and repeat. We even let the towel collect over night and rinse it off the next day. Keep repeating as you have time. Yes, you have to keep running your pump to do this, but it will get the rust out. If you don’t believe it, just give it a shot one time and you will be amazed at how much rust loads up on that towel. It took us a couple of weekends and once or twice daily during the week but worked better than any chemicals that the local pool supply folks suggested. Continue to check your cartridge filter and clean it out as well it doesn’t do nearly as good a job of collecting the rust but it will collect some and needs to be cleaned out as long as your water is heavy with it.
A. Hi, Janet. I’m not a pool owner, but this is what occurs to me. The brown coloration is precipitated iron. Yes, it is exactly the same thing as rust particles. If there is iron in the water it precipitates out as particles when the water is alkaline and tends to dissolve into transparency when the water is acidic or if there is a complexing/sequestering agent which dissolves it.
Regards and good luck,
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What Happens If My Pool Has Too Muchiron
The first ones thatwill suffer from an overwhelming amount of iron are your pool, hair, and nails.
Too much of it can harmyour walls, floor, and pump, leaving it all stained. Not only that, but yournails and hair will also be discolored as a swimmer. Who would want that? Noone.
Eventually, the rustcan corrode copper metals as well, impacting other parts of your fixtures.
Thus, it is imperativeto know about the indications of extreme iron before it makes your pool rust.
Cleaning The Pool Filter Often With Iron Out To Remove Rust
We also use the pools filter system to help remove the rust. I clean the filter repeatedly because it would be way too expensive to replace the filter cartridge every single day. The filters are easy to clean.
I soak the filters and the socks in Iron Out and then rinse them really well because Iron Out isnt supposed to go in the pool water. Its made for washing clothing that you will later wear on your body, so I assume its fine to use on the filters as long as I rinse them well just like you would clothing. If you have doubts about the safety of using Iron Out on the filter, you should use your own discretion.
See what an amazing job the Iron Out does at getting the filter cartridge clean!
Many people wonder about using iron out in swimming pool water. I do not believe that is wise. Is Iron Out for pools? NO! Thats not the purpose of Iron Out, and that would be adding chemicals into the pool water where you would be soaking yourself in them instead of rinsing the substance away from the filter. Its not worth the risk.
You can find Iron Out for cleaning your pool filters at Walmart and other retailers.
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How Iron Gets Into A Pool Water
Iron is the fourth most abundant metal on earth. The silver shining metal exists naturally in water, but when it’s in high concentrations, it affects the quality of your pool water and becomes toxic. It becomes corrosive as a result of the reaction with water and overtime.
The water begins to appear cloudy. High concentration levels of chlorine accelerate this corrosion. So, adding chlorine will worsen the brown coloration of the water.
Iron isnt the only metal that discolors pool water. Copper in high concentrations will lower pH and affect the quality of water.
Also, the use of low-quality water equipment will alter the quality of the water. The metal parts are made of iron, and when they dissolve in water, the pool water becomes corrodible.
Get Chlorine Back To Normal Levels
Raise your free chlorine level to 1.0 or 2.0 and leave it there. You need to use liquid chlorine bleach for this purpose.
Be cautious while adding chlorine, and watch for any staining in the process. Ensure that you keep your chlorine at the minimum level possible, depending on the available cyanuric acid level.
You can use a chlorine/cyanuric acid chart or pool calculator to find the accurate amount of free chlorine you need.
After getting the chlorine to the recommended level between 1 and 2 ppm, avoid shocking your pool for about two weeks to allow the ascorbic acid to be completely used up. After about two weeks, you will notice chlorine being used up as usual. You can then begin to shock your pool carefully to avoid adding excess chlorine.
Important Note: High pH levels and chlorine will definitely precipitate any metal compound in your water if not treated or removed out of your water.
Also Check: Raising Cyanuric Acid In Pools
How To Identify The Presence Of Iron In Water
The most common form of identification is the rusty brown color of your pool water. However, you may not readily notice the presence of iron if the concentration is at normal levels. That is why you should take your pool water sample to a regional pool shop to get it analyzed.
Note that your pool water may not appear as rusty brown for a long time if its not removed. Over time, the rusty brown will change to black and then to green. At this stage, it means that your pool water has copper. It will become increasingly difficult to treat the pool water, but there is always a solution for it.
Common Types Of Metal Found In Your Pool
Most people do not realize that they have metals in their water until an unsightly stain appears. Metal stains will commonly appear shortly after chlorine is added or after the swimming pool is shocked with granular chlorine. The two most common types of metal stains are iron and copper and are two of the most common metals that are tested when checking swimming pool water. Iron can cause rust-colored stains to develop on the finish of the swimming pool, while copper can cause the swimming pool to finish or water to appear green. Copper can be found in many mineral systems, ionizers, as well as algaecides.
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Iron To Never See You Again
The chemicals in your pool are back to their happy, normal levels and your pool walls and floor are stain-freeand you can go back to your regularly scheduled programming. And since you know easy ways to keep that metal out, you might never have to look up this particular blog post again. For now, the hard work is over, your pool is looking great, and if thats not a reason to relax, I dont know what is. Enjoy.
Water Softener Iron Removal
This unique formula can be used for water softener iron removal. Simply layer between bags of salt to keep your water iron free. See full instructions in How to Use below.
How Often to Use: Use Iron OUT when new rust stains appear inside or outside your home.
Non-Compatible Surfaces/Materials:
For more product information, see our Safety Data Sheets .
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Put That Stain To The Real Test
Again, that ascorbic acid test will certainly help you determine that its a metal, not organic matter, thats leaving its mark on your pool. But an even better way to determine which metals are at work in your pool is to use good old water test strips. Make sure you get one that tests for metals like iron, copper, and manganese. If you really want to prevent this from happening again, itll help to know exactly which metal is to blame. Not that were pointing fingers or anything.
How To Prevent From Recurring
Usually, the situation may recur, and when it does, you may not be in the position to find a way to fill up your pool. In that case, you shouldnt panic. Regularly add a chelating agent to the water. These agents will remove metal ions from water by collecting the metal at the bottom of the water. A chelating agent will inactivate this metal.
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S To Eliminate Iron From Pool Water
To remove iron and other metals from water, you have many solutions but, you should choose the right method only after analysing your pool. For this, you should first get the pool water tested by a lab in pool store.
After they confirm the high levels of iron in your pool water, you can take their guidance for solution.
Lets discuss about some of the commonly used iron removal methods in detail:
Why Does My Pool Discolor When I Add Chlorine
Swimming pool fill-water sourced from the Well is always full of heavy metals such as Copper, Iron, Silver, Magnesium, or Manganese. These metals can also be found in some untreated municipal water, and to avoid metal stains, it’s always advisable to test your fill-water for heavy metals before using any water in your pool.
Heavy metals when oxidized by chlorine, produce metal stains in a swimming pool. If your pool water has been changing color to green, brown, or black especially after adding chlorine or when pH is high, that is a metal stain and it’s caused by the presence of heavy metals in pool water commonly Copper, Iron, and Silver.
The good news is that you can get rid of the metal stains and prevent metal staining in the future. The most common types of metals you can find in your pool water are Copper and Iron. However Silver, Magnesium, and Manganese may also be found in some pools especially when using Well fill-water around regions where these heavy metals are mined.
Copper metal will be oxidized by Chlorine or high pH producing light green stains Silver is oxidized producing black stains Iron is oxidized producing brown or rusty stains, Manganese and Magnesium are oxidized producing purple stains that can be seen on the walls, floor, liners, fiberglass, and sometimes on pool equipment.
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What Causes Brown Rusty Water In My Pool
First of all,you need to know where the iron comes from. By knowing that, you can somehowprevent your pool from getting any iron in the first place.
Its interestingto note that iron is found in the earths crust. Thats why water that has hadcontact with earth will always have traces of iron inside. Now, when the ironmixes with the water, it will corrode. Once it corrodes, it will contaminatethe pool.
So, how doesfill water get into your pool in the first place?
For one, if youuse bad quality pool equipment, the iron that comes from the equipment willcorrode and mix with the pool water. Thats why its always important to usehigh-quality pool equipment to clean your pool.
How do you knowif there is iron in your pool, anyway?
The most obvioussign is discoloration. Usually, metals have a medium level if ever your poollooks kind of green. Once it has very high levels, your pool will eventuallyturn brown.
However, a poolfilled with an iron will not always have blatant discoloration. Thus, a moreaccurate way to know whether theres iron in your pool or not is to test it.
