Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Water chemistry High Iron Low pH

This not a question for pond water but on a well I've had dug as a water source for our cabin. I would like to get some independent opinions on a solution from someone who is not trying to sell me a system. With that being said if anyone has had personal experience with a similar problem and found a soultion I'd love to know which systems worked. The iron in the water is visable and is 4.7 ppm, the pH is 6.3 flow rate at the pump is 15.9 gal/min. I know this question is off the beaten path. But, the local dept of health and clemson haven't been much help. Thanks.

Brown Lab (am I right?):

I don't remember ever hearing what our well water pH is, but we have (sometimes) visible bacterial iron (plus intermittent visible sediment), with more dissolved iron than a regular salt-recharging water softener can handle.

We have a three-stage system on the water for the house (the livestock are on their own - what are now herefords started out as charolais ). First is mechanical filtration, using two double-length filter cartridge holders. I used to try and change these when they had clogged, but sometimes (or with some brands of filters) sediment was sucked through filters that should have been clogged (which can be real bad on stage 2 and stage 3; I have the repair bills to prove it). Now I change them at the first of every month (unless they actually clog sooner, which is rare since they stopped drilling new wells in the subdivision next door).

The second stage is an "iron filter", which is somewhat analogous to a regular water softener except that it uses Potassium Permanganate (KMNO4) as it's recharge chemical. More KMNO4 only has to be added once every year or so (we just went 18 months and hadn't quite run out yet). You can't used just an iron filter, because it's trace leak-through KMNO4 would stain fixtures purplish-brown.

The third stage is a conventional, salt-recharging water softener.

I'm guessing in todays' dollars, total system cost would be in the range of $3k - $5k.

dog,
iron in my well water runs about 2 milligrams per liter (mg/l) equivalent to 2 ppm. our standard water softener does a good job on it reducing it to below analytical detection limits. it also takes out all other major elements (Mg, Ca, P, etc.) and replaces those ions with Na (sodium). as such, small word of caution though (my recommendation is) that it is healthier for you to drink the hard water, and leave the soft water to yer appliances and whatnot. for drinking, we run our hardwater through a (replaceable) charcoal filter. if i wuz made of money, i'd install a reverse osmosis system, but the charcoal works fine removing any taste and odor issues........so far anyway. if yer gonna drink the soft water, another option is to run potassium chloride (sylvite - KCl) salt instead of sodium chloride (halite - NaCl) salt in the softener, but the KCl salt is more expensive if you can find it.

yep a chocolate lab

originally I thought I would require a water softner. As I'm learning, that won't solve my delema. The two minerals from what I am told that generally make up "hard water" are Ca (0.5 ppm) and Mg (0.9 ppm) in my analysis. The iron is visable and this is a new construction and I'd hate to turn the bath tubs orange. I hate to spend the money, but I'd really hate to replace the fixtures and then spend the money for an iron filter and pH increaser.

I suggest a particulate filter for everything (a screen type). These you back flush about every six months or as needed.

I recommend a water softner ($500) for water used to wash dishs and cloths, take baths, etc. I use five bags of salt about every 4-6 months at $4 per bag. Even at that you may get some orange like in the toilet tank. So periodically, throw a half of a cup of iron out into the tank. That will knock out iron bacteria, and cut the iron.

Untreated water will turn things orange (like my fence and drive way).

Drinking water, ice, etc. we use a carbon micro filter and process the hard water. It gets changed about every six months and runs about $30.

Sams club has a reverse osmosis system for about $160 that might work for your drinking water. I need to do more research on that as it's almost too inexpensive to do much.

Some thoughts. It's just part of the cost of living away from the city...

If you have visible iron, most of the iron is not soluble, so won't be removed effectively with a softener. There are basically two ways to handle the problem of iron (soluble and insoluble). Oxygenate the iron to insoluble form, and filter, or remove through exchange using ion exchange resin (removes mainly just the soluble form). Using the greensand filter suggested above, regenerated with KMNO4 is one way to remove all iron. using a filox material in place of greensand will also work. Another is to set up a periodic down hole chlorination, and filter using standard sand filter (backwashable kind like they use on a swimming pool will remove most of it) and then you could polish this with a softener to remove the small amount of soluble iron left. You have extremely soft water so using a softener for removal will be very efficient, add very little Na to the water, and will likely only need regeneration very infrequently. When i lived in IN. I had a house well that had 2-3 ppm iron. i added a gallon of bleach down the well every 6 months or so, turned on the water hose and let it run back down the well to mix and blend the bleach, then let it run to the ground till the chlorine smell disappated. that plus a softener was all I ever needed to keep the wife happy with her whites.
Mike

just learning out loud here......it sounds like there is a threshold for which conventional softeners dont work on iron, simply put, in my case, i have ~2 ppm Fe with small visible oily blebs on the hardwater (insoluble Fe) that our conventional softener DOES a good job on......so we must be right at (below) the threshold....so probably > 2ppm with insoluble Fe, and you gotta do something different, like others have suggested above.

Well, I bought the Reverse Osmosis Water Filtration System. Got the Wells for $140 from Costo($160 from Sams). It's a five stage by Watts. Not that this has a lot to do with water chemistry in ponds unless you want to fill an aquarium or something, but a subject of interst none the less. It seems that people that own ponds also live in the country, and have well water to contend with. WQ is always of concern if it's in the pond, in the sprinkler system, or in the house.

Anyway, the system is rated at 25 gal/day, and I've hooked it up to my ice maker also. If anyone is interested in installation or the scoop on performance, PM me. Thier web page nore there installation instruction tells it all, but I think it's a good product. It needs quite a bit of space below the sink as it's quite large, and needs maintenance about every six months. I've tasted the water, and this should get you off the bottled water. Based upon the original question, this should help with the iron and hardness in the drinking water for purposes of consumption.

You guys can tell me if I'm all wet. I'm an environmental engineer and worked on groundwater contamination on military installations, primarily TCE and other chlorinated hydrocarbons. We've installed numourous pump and treat systems and iron fouling has been a major problem. Iron bacteria and fouling will close off an 8" pipe in a couple of years and shut a system down. The same with wells. I've noticed a lot of accumulation in the toilet tank of my house which leads me to think about my well. Talk about a tough question, chlorine treatment (sodium hypochlorite)can abait the bacteria and iron accumulation in the well but can also kill the septic tank. I'm sure you don't want to flush the well rinse into your pond or on the grass. M, your thoughts?

I can't give any technical info but can give you a little personal experience. I've lived in 3 houses within 1/2 mile of each other all on wells with enough iron in the water to turn a shower bright orange in a couple of day of the softener running out of salt. 1st house had a no-name single stage electric powered softener. It was a demand type that would cycle whenever it needed to. It required about 200lbs of salt per month and if it was cycling during your shower you wouldn't have any soft water. The second was made by Culligan, it was electric and had a timer to cycle every night at around 3AM, the most unlikely time I would be using water. It cycled even if you didn't use any water and therefore used a lot of salt, 300lb per month. Even with this much salt usage I still had to use iron out to keep from staining the shower. I built a house a couple of years ago and decided on a Kinetico. It cost more than other systems but has performed well. I bought a reconditioned unit and saved a few $$. It uses no electric and cycles as needed based on how much water passes through it. Since there are 2 resin tanks you never have a shortage of soft water. It also came with a sediment filter. I change the filter every 6 months and add about 200lbs of salt twice a year.

Wow. Mine is a Sears Kenmore (high end) unit. It cycles once a day based upon a programmable clock. It has a vacation cycle. It takes five bags to fill up, and I use about 5 bags every four months or so. What are the bags? 50 lbs?. So that is about 250 lbs every four months. My sediment fileter is the type you flush. Put a bucket below it and open it ever so slowly. It blows the sediment out the bottom ever so quickly...

We've had the RO system for a couple of days and everything tastes different. The coffee tastes way too strong, the ice has no after taste, and water is very clear. See my previous post regarding RO systems.

Here's to good tasteing water, and big healthy fish. Keep warm.

Use of RO will definitely take out iron and hardness (and everything else down to around 1-5% of the original concentration in the feedwater). One issue you might have with iron in chlorinated water source is that iron catylyzes oxydation of Thin film composite membranes so you will burn these if you have iron and CL2. Most of the home water RO's are probably cellulose acetate membranes (I never checked to see what this market uses), but even those membranes will get iron fouled and act with chlorine to "burn" holes in the membrane. Once that happens, you have raw water passage through the membranes and essentially have no reverse osmosis removal occurring.
Use of salt should be programamble on all softeners, even the low end timer based ones. Basically you get around 25Kgr. removal per cubic foot of resin regenerated at 12 lb. / ft3. All home softener units I ever saw are 1 ft3 size and use 8-12 lb. salt per regeneration. Set the timer to regenerate every 4300 gallons of water per 100 ppm hardness. In other words, if you have 200 ppm hardness, then regenerate every 2250 gallons. If the water analysis is reported in "grains per gallon" (old style reporting method) then multiply by 17.1 to convert to ppm as calcium carbonate hardness.
To remove hardness use a softener. To remove iron up to 3 ppm and hardness, use a softener. To remove iron above 3 ppm, add iron out to the salt or use the salt with an iron remover built in (or just add a couple of lbs of citric acid to the tank every now and then). To reduce all elements and reduce organics, use an RO. Keep in mind that household RO's have low overall recovery, so they waste approximately 50% of the feedwater as purge, They area water hog if your water costs are high. Softeners on the other hand have around 90-95% recovery.
Mike

Mike, Iron Out or CLR, or citric acid. Please clarify...

Citric acid is the most effective iron remover for removing iron from ion exchange resin. Just add a couple of lbs. to the salt tank every month or so to remove iron in the next regeneration.