Regular salt or Iron Out?

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wantonsoup

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I have a bleach injection system, then a Centaur carbon and finally a softener. I've got some iron and am getting significant orange staining in my toilets this year - would Iron Out salt make this better or worse? Or should I just have my salt recirc more often? What do you recommend?
 

ByteMe

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Chlorine injection and still rust stains? Retention tank is needed is my guess.
 

wantonsoup

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Chlorine injection and still rust stains? Retention tank is needed is my guess.
That's what I've got - Stenner pump and it goes into 40 gal retention tank. And I've got the pump dialed up to 7 or 8 (out of 10) too.
 

ByteMe

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As far as I know, you are borked. But then, I don't have a clue. Others on here should be able to help.

Good luck.
 

ditttohead

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How much iron is in your raw water and how much chlorine are you injecting (ppm)?

Any other problems like hydrogen sulfide, tannins, manganese etc. that could be using the chlorine?
 

Reach4

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1.What makes you think you have Centaur Carbon in one of your tanks?
Usually a chlorine injection system and a contact tank are followed with a tank with activated charcoal for chlorine removal. Centaur Carbon in a system such as you describe would be very unusual.

Activated carbon in this application has a life of maybe 3 years. But that is not your problem. Because old carbon would just pass through chlorine.

2. So I expect that your Stenner pump is not pumping sufficiently or that your bleach solution is too weak. I don't know what a 7 or 8 means, but is bleach solution being withdrawn from the solution tank at the rate you would expect?
3. What is your solution recipe? (bleach brand, amount of bleach per batch, water per batch)

4. How long did the system work right, and how long has it not been working right?
 

Mikey

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I use Centaur carbon in my system, and it has worked well for 10+ years. Your retention tank sounds small, though -- you need a minimum contact time for the chlorine to completely oxidize the ferrous iron to ferric, and that is dependent on the flow rate and tank size. My tank is 125 gallons, and we don't have a particularly high flow rate -- maybe 10gpm peak, giving a ~12min contact time. One source recommends:

Amount of chlorine required to kill bacteria and oxidize iron, manganese and hydrogen sulfide:

table-4.png


and in our case, it seems to work as desired. I use a spun filter downstream from the contact tank which verifies that the iron is being oxidized, and keeps the big pieces out of the carbon. After the carbon, the water is pure but still has residual hardness, which the softener takes care of. Overall, we're very happy with it. The only real problem is that with no residual chlorine in the water, we see objectional mold growth under the rim of the commodes. So, I'm thinking about re-chlorinating downstream of the softener. My plumbing will allow selective delivery of the newly-chlorinated water to any desired fixture(s).
 

Reach4

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I use Centaur Carbon with no chlorine injection and no settling tank for iron and sulfur. It uses the oxygen dissolved in the incoming water. I only use chlorine solution during the backwash.


Regarding the mold, I would do a one-time sanitizing of the plumbing..
 
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