Asorbic Acid Or Metal Sequestioning Agents

[wsommariva]

I have a bad iron stain situation in my fiberglass pool. I keep it under control by using asorbic acid and metal sequestering agents. Sometimes I get cloudy water that lasts a week or so. I think I am overdosing on either the AA or SA. Anyone know which causes cloudy water so I can adjust my treatment?

[waterbear]

I have a bad iron stain situation in my fiberglass pool. I keep it under control by using asorbic acid and metal sequestering agents. Sometimes I get cloudy water that lasts a week or so. I think I am overdosing on either the AA or SA. Anyone know which causes cloudy water so I can adjust my treatment?

2 possible causes:

1) AA destroys chlorine (and vice versa) so the AA treatment is done at very low or no FC, under .5 ppm. This can allow algae to start blooming and the first stage is cloudy water. Use a dose of PolyQuat 60 or make sure your borates are topped off at 50 ppm before you use the AA and remember to add the seqesterant with it.

2) Overdosing on phosphanate based seqestrants can cause the precipitation of calcium phosphonate which can cloud the water for a few days. While it is important to make sure you dose regularly with seqestrant to keep stains from reappearing too much at one time is not a good idea. YOu should be adding a maintenance dose (usually only a couple of ounces per 10k gallons) every 2-4 weeks in most cases.

Are you still using a copper ionizer system? If so you should NOT be using ANY metal seqestrant since that will inactivate the copper in your water and copper at it's best is not a very good sanitizerr, merely an algaecide.

I suspect your cloudy water might be bacterial after adding the seqeustrant since you have esentially no sanitize at that point.

Finally, there is a lot of empirical data that suggests that keeping your CH up helps prevent staining of fiberglass pools. Many people with fiberglass pools treat them like vinyl pools and don't worry about calcuim levels when they drop low but keeping the calcium hardness above 300 ppm has demonstrated that it slows down or stops staining, as long as you stay on top of your water balance and avoid pH spikes above about 7.8. In general, if you have problems with metal stains in a fiberglass pool it is better to keep the pH on the lower end of the scale.

[wsommariva]

Yes still with the CL free. I monitor my copper carefully and it's always in the required zone. When I add the AA and SA, I boost the copper for a day. Then reduce to maintanance level. So I think that the SA would probably be my problem, hopefully. So, I'll reduce the SA. It's a fine balance of stain free and clear water. My iron levels are between .2 and .4 ppm. Across the street from my home are abandoned iron mines and yes we have well water. So, may be a tuff battle.

Was also thinking of perhaps just using asorbic acid as a mainatnance procedure. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks once again.

[waterbear]

Yes still with the CL free. I monitor my copper carefully and it's always in the required zone. When I add the AA and SA, I boost the copper for a day. Then reduce to maintanance level. So I think that the SA would probably be my problem, hopefully. So, I'll reduce the SA. It's a fine balance of stain free and clear water. My iron levels are between .2 and .4 ppm. Across the street from my home are abandoned iron mines and yes we have well water. So, may be a tuff battle.

Was also thinking of perhaps just using asorbic acid as a mainatnance procedure. Any thoughts on that?

Thanks once again.

Copper stains pools. Period. On top of that you also have iron. I would just learn to live with the stains and give up on trying to get rid of them because it is a losing battle in your particular case. Realize that the AA just causes the metals to dissolve back into the water and since you cannot really use a sequestrant and maintain what little sanitizer effect the copper is giving you the metals will just stain back in a short period of time. It is truly a losing battle. Just enjoy the water, that's what it's really about, instead of stressing over the stains.

What color are your stains, btw?

[wsommariva]

Brownish. Noone is bothered either with the stains or the cloudy water but me.

I'll keep trying to adjust my treatments.

[waterbear]

Brownish. Noone is bothered either with the stains or the cloudy water but me.

Brownish could be either iron or copper in a fiberglass pool. The cloudy water is most likely because you are using an ionizer.

I'll keep trying to adjust my treatments.

Good Luck!

[downtownv]

How much AA should I use per 1000 gallons to control staining in a Fiberglass pool? What effect would tat have on the balance of the water? How would I need to compensate for the AA addition?