Stumped with toilet tank iron

[jjamison]

Stumped with toilet tank iron, your thoughts would be appreciated...

I’ve had my system set up for over ten years now. Occasionally things go wrong, e.g. seals go bad, and I fix it, but if nothing is going wrong, my water is great. For the last couple of months, I’ve been stumped by toilet tank iron. I’ll clean the bowl and the tank on the back with Iron Out or similar product and only three or four days later I’ll have a coating of iron on everything in the back and light evidence in the bowl. I have a Clorox tablet in the tank which I imagine is helping to precipitate this iron making it more noticeable. I had one guy recommend just removing the chlorine tablet. Sort of like “doc it hurts when I move my arm like this…” he, he. As I’ve not had this problem in the past years using Clorox tablets, I want to know what’s changed. Here’s what I’m thinking, what do you think?

a) my wife and I are flushing the toilets during regeneration (we wake up late on the sofa and go to bed) causing some iron to enter the toilet tanks, I must have tweaked the regeneration times such that this is happening now when it hasn’t in the past, I should just change regeneration times and see what happens

b) early one morning I noticed a surge of brown water when I turned on the bath water before I pulled the shower diverter, and regeneration is resulting in a bit of iron laden water entering the pipes and in the past this water was just going down the tub drain, but something changed (regen time programming and/or toilet use habits) so now it’s going in the toilets, what i should do is: between 12 and 5 am I should just make sure and run some water before flushing the toilets

b) I’m having iron bleed through generally and I need to test my water again, it’s not just the toilets, you just think it is because that's what you notice, you probably have a failing seal or scarred piston or some other hardware related problem, it’s not a programming or toilet use issue, check your hardware again

c) a little earthquake changed our water and I have more iron now, I need to test our raw water again, and need to adjust to compensate

ps I have chlorine injection/retention, tank for pH adjustment with calcite, tank of katalox light for iron filtration, tank of centaur carbon, and a final tank of fine mesh softening resin.

pps I double checked my regeneration times to make sure none of the valve regenerations are overlapping

ppps I just cleaned and replaced media in the calcite and resin tanks and it didn’t fix the problem

 

[Reach4]

Quite the treatment system. What injects the chlorine? Is the solution tank going down as much as it did before? Is the bleach from a different source now?

Is there any residual chlorine into the Centaur Carbon?

 

[Sponsor]

 

[jjamison]

Hey Reach,
About 14 years ago I had my water tested and it was 10ppm plus in iron. The raw water looks like chocolate milk. Well, not quite, but you get the picture. Here's my water blog if you want to see pictures (https://mywaterfiltration.blogspot.com/2009/) more recent posts (https://mywaterfiltration.blogspot.com/2019/) have programming information.
Those are good questions about the chlorine!
Unfortunately, the injection system looks good with the same type and quantity of chlorine and flow rate/draw down of chlorine looks normal. I'm not sure about the residual chlorine into the carbon. That's interesting. Is that a way to test if the media/katalox is doing it's job? I failed to mention I regenerate the katalox with pot perm as well, so residual chlorine might not be as relevant a diagnostic? I understand the chlorine does kinda the same thing (I overdesigned the system for sure).

 

[Reach4]

http://www.lamotte.com/en/water-wastewater/test-strips/2964-g.html are test strips... There may be some pool free-chlorine tests that are even better for the low range.

My first thought would think you would like to see maybe 2 ppm (mg/L) into the KL. Since the pot perm is only used in regeneration, I suspect it is rinsed out before the Centaur Carbon. I don't know how the pot perm and bleach interact.

I am not sure about this.... It would be interesting to see where you stand on the residual chlorine right now.

I get my bleach at Aldi. I would not get it from Dollar General or Family Dollar. Clorox is probably good, but it does come with an additive. See https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/ditching-chlorination-have-some-questions.76116/ discussion.

 

[wascalwabbitt]

JJamison,
Looking at your blog --- that's got to be brutal to change out the product in your tanks -- looks like you're crawling around on your knees down there, not much head room!!! Hopefully you've got a short wife who can help!!

What was the deciding factor for you to install the chlorine? Did you step incrementally to get there or installed everything in one go?

My neighbor has quite high iron also, has a softener (which is allowing iron leakage). He is going to install an iron filter next and only if that doesn't do an acceptable job, then go all the way to chlorine.

 

[ditttohead]

A few things to consider. Testing iron is key here. See where the iron levels are and where you are getting bleed through. You should inject about 1 PPM of chlorine per PPM of iron. You could also consider switching to H2o2. Iron levels tend to vary significantly over time.

Backwash the KL tank and see how much iron is coming out during the backwash cycle. Once the water runs clear you should add several minutes after that in the backwash cycle. Be sure to have an adequate rapid rinse cycle. You can do a simple test to see if the valves are actually working by sucking salt instead of pot perm in during the regen cycle and tasting the drain water within the first minute of the draw cycle. The water should not be salty. You can do a similar test with the tanks during service. Introduce salty water to the inlet of the systems and see if salty water comes out almost instantly. This is a simple way of integrity testing the valves.

Do you have a iron testing kit?

 

[jjamison]

Thanks Reach, wabbit and dittohead!
My long term goal is to have a filter/dog washing house where I can access filters standing up.
I added and switched out tanks over time. The chlorine was not an original installation. It looks like I already had started chlorine injection when the blog began. So, the first five years are lost in time and I can't speak to my thought process.
It sounds as if your neighbor's plan sounds reasonable.
I do have a good iron test kit.
It's been a while since I've thought about H202. Knowing it's safer, but I'd always heard too unstable to be useful, but just hearsay.
You debugging process with salt sounds really useful.
I need to get systematic and see what I can learn.
I'd been hoping it was something behavioral rather than hardware related.
One behavioral issue I still haven't answered satisfactorily though is whether my wife flushing during the softer regeneration cycle could be allowing iron into the toilet reservoir tank. Is that possible?
First things first, I need to test for iron right now in the middle of the day and see what I find.
Thanks again folks!
I very much appreciate your thoughts.

 

[jjamison]

Iron CHEMets Kit results
Soluble Iron zero
Total Iron .1ppm, maybe, see image below.
The first is using the soluble/ferrous iron procedure.
The last image below is using the total iron procedure with activator solution.
So... even in the middle of the day I have .1ppm of total iron making its way through.

 

[jjamison]

More testing the next day late afternoon (previous samples were also late afternoon).
Soluble Iron zero
Total Iron also looks like zero
BYPASS softener
Soluble Iron zero
Total Iron about .1ppm.
BYPASS softener, centaur carbon, and second Katalox Light tank
Soluble Iron 7-9ppm
Total Iron not tested
BYPASS softener, centaur carbon, and both Katalox Light tanks
Soluble Iron 9-10ppm
Total Iron not tested
Notes:
Total system is under ideal conditions resulting in no measurable iron
Softener isn't removing much iron
Second Katalox Light tank with Centaur Carbon tank are removing a great deal of iron.
Even with chlorine injection/retention time, calcite tank, and one Katalox Light tank 7-9ppm of iron remain in water.
I would have expected half that number or even less. Is the first Katalox Light tank doing its job?
The second Katalox Light tank and Centaur Carbon tank then remove almost all of that amount with softener doing a small amount of polishing.
As ditto suggested I should: "Backwash the KL tank and see how much iron is coming out during the backwash cycle. Once the water runs clear you should add several minutes after that in the backwash cycle. Be sure to have an adequate rapid rinse cycle."
I should also test the backwash of the softener. If the softener backwash contains iron then the toilet reservoir tank problem could be due to insufficient backwash time and/or use during regeneration?
Below you first see the total iron test of water out of the softener.
Second is the total iron test of water bypassing the softener.
Third is soluble iron test of water bypassing KL2 and Carbon tanks (this result was virtually indistinguishable from the test after bypassing both KL tanks).

 

[jjamison]

My toilet tanks, bowl and especially reservoir in the back, are finally iron free.
After replacing all my seals and spacer and injectors I was good to go.
I also used a water pick and softener cleaner inside the valves.
Anyway, it was a matter of cleaning and replacing what I couldn't clean sufficiently.