Removing metal with flocculant

[dbdbdb]

I live in the Netherlands and our town's water supply is provided from a ground source. It contains unusually visible amounts of metal straight from the tap which makes even taking a bath unpleasant.

This is my third year of managing this amount of metal in a pool. I've read countless threads on how others manage metal. It can take a week or two of constant filtering with both the sand filter and polyfill (in the skimmers) to get enough of the oxidised metal out the pool to restore it to blue. Sequestrant seems to be a bit hit and miss and expensive. Performing a SLAM is impossible without causing more oxidation.

Last weeked I added a gallon of chlorine after topping up the pool with fresh water. Within ten minutes the chlorine had oxidised the metal and the pool had the tell-tale green tinge. Clearing the pool was an emergency as we had a couple of parties planned this week (public holiday in Netherlands) and I had no time to filter the pool clear.

So after some reading (and experimenting) I decided to floc the pool for the first time. I've never used floc before and didn't know whether it would work for oxidised metal. However at this point I was desparate, so it was worth a shot.

The results were immediate and amazing. Within thirty minutes of adding the floc, whilst it was still mixing (multiport valve on recirculate), I could already see oxidised metal dropping to the botton of the pool . Once mixed, I switched off the pump and left overnight. After vacuuming to waste this morning my water is perfectly blue and crystal clear!

I know that floc is sometimes frowned upon. However in my circumstances, with limited time to fix the pool, it did a great job and will now be part of my armoury against metals in the future.

[Teapot1]

Just to be clear (pun intended) I am in favour of flocculent! Which one did you use? As there are anionic and cationic flocculents some attracts negative particles the other positive particles as you have metals you would normally select a negative one (anionic) to attract the positive metals.

[WillieApola]

So the big question is.... Can we make our water chemistry adjustments using BBB without starting over - or should we drain and start from scratch?

[Teapot1]

Normally you can make adjustments with the water you have. There are of course caveats to this, Cyanuric acid level, easier to drain and replace in most cases. If the levels of metals or phosphates are too high and fresh water would consideranly lower the problems then replacement maybe quicker and cheaper.
Now what is your issue?

[kuinn171]

Normally you can make adjustments with the water you have. There are of course caveats to this, Cyanuric acid level, easier to drain and replace in most cases. If the levels of metals or phosphates are too high and fresh water would consideranly lower the problems then replacement maybe quicker and cheaper.
Now what is your issue?

We started getting brown stains on the walls of our fiberglass pool and a greenish water color. Took a sample to the pool store, and they said the chemicals were fine and asked if we had a water heater. We did. One we never used but the water went through without a bypass. They recommended we do a no drain acid wash. We did, and it was beautiful for 5 days, I assume after the sequestrant degraded. So we decided to take off the pool heater. We bought CuLator metal eliminator and put that in after acid washing a second time. Pool looked great for about a week. It rained last night, and now the staining is coming back. Do we need to drain the pool?

[Teapot1]

You could try the polyballs or polyester fibre in your skimmer basket, these seem to like removing metals. I have not personally tried this but others report success. I use Dryden Aquas AFM filter media as this also removes iron if you do it right.