Treating ~6 mg/L Iron Contaminant in Well Water

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Mountain Stream

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Hello DIY Love Forum,

My well water is high in iron and the water stinks. It stinks maybe three times a year, primarily in the hot water. I would like to treat the water so it is safe for brushing teeth, does not stain the fixtures, is not smelly, and does not clog the piping. I shock the well annually. Our family uses bottled water and may switch to RO, so, I guess it would be good to minimize contaminants in the water before it reaches the RO filters (?).

Selection parameters:

Well pump: 10 GPM at designed head

House: 3.5 baths. Three adults.

20-year-old water softener.

DIY installation preferred (I would prefer not to maintain the system, but would rather maintain it than hire someone to maintain it).

The offending contaminants include (in mg/L):
Iron: 5.896
Manganese: 0.634
Hardness: 306.7
TDS: 757
Sodium: 24

Also, pH is 6.8
No bacteria or arsenic detected.

Budget: $5K

You are more than welcome to try to change my mind, but so far, I tend to think the following:
- H2O2 is a very flexible solution for a myriad of problems, is low in maintenance, but the peroxide annual cost is too high.
- My opinion is that a combined iron/sulfur filter and softener is too complex and would be hard to troubleshoot … the two systems should be separated.
- I am ignorant on the use of ozone to assist with backwashing iron filters. Would like to understand if this is practical.

I come with hat in hand reaching out to the combined expertise of this forum to help me with the technical decision on what water treatment equipment is a best fit. I will try to report on results so others will benefit.
 

WorthFlorida

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The 20 year old softener has it been maintained? Has the media bed ever been changed? Regardless of salt type used, have you ever used Iron Out to clean the iron from the softener? How old is the water heater and has the anode rod ever been changed? Do you know what type?

All filters and conditioners take maintenance. No way to get around it. My uneducated guess is you'll need after the pressure tank, a Potassium Permanganate filter to remove iron (staining), magnesium and hydrogen sulfide (the stink). After that a chlorinator injector and a blending tank for sanitizing, after that a sand filter then the water softener. A optional carbon filter after all of it to polish the water to remove any other chemicals and to improve taste and clarity. $5k is not nearly going to be enough. A local water treatment company is always your best option since they know the water problems in your area. You can spend a lot of money and it may not take care of your water problems.
 

Mountain Stream

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The 20-y/o softener has been maintained (marginally). I replaced the valve piton once. Hard to find Culligan parts. The media bed never has been changed during the eight years I've owned the house. Looking at videos ... it doesn't look too hard to change the media bed.

I have added Iron Out to the salt, but not in the last year. The water heater is four y/o and has the original anode (assume magnesium anode rod). I think I read somewhere that that can be a source of the smell.

The Virginia Cooperative Extension provided a water treatment brochure on conventional equipment that would address iron removal. The Potassium Permanganate filter was one mentioned. The on-line dealers claim the Potassium Permanganate filter is old tech and their new stuff is better ... and of course everyone else has inferior stuff, as claimed be these web-based companies.

I had not considered that a local company will be well versed in how to treat local water quality problems. I was not wanting to have a local company spend effort to give me a proposed solution, and then I end up installing the system. I suppose I could offer a consulting fee.
 

WorthFlorida

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Water salesman I put in the same closet as used car salesmen. If they start talking about how your are going not live as long by not drinking healthy water, etc., tell him that you'll drink bottled water. If they only talk what the equipment will do to the water, then they are on my better side. If it's the owner of the company that comes to your home, usually that is the person you want.
 

Skyjumper

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What do you think about air injection iron filters, with and without ozone?
air injection will not work for 6ppm iron. ozone or not. you will need peroxide or chlorine and a contact tank. others here can provide much more advice on those. I have AIO and can speak for its limitations.
 

ditttohead

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Any type of water treatment has limitations. One of the problems with your water is the slightly low pH. In general iron/manganese reduction is difficult without higher pH. AIO with ozone is a popular choice for lo levels of iron, typically well below 5 ppm and adequate pH. I have had some companies use AIO3 designs with 20 ppm iron successfully for a short amount of time, but these systems tend to be too high of maintenance. When yo say H2o2 is too expensive, if you do the math it is actually similar if not lower in cost compared to chlorine. Pot perm... old school, effective, but rarely used anymore for a multitude of reasons. Without a complete water report and the information you gave here, I would lean toward h2o2 injection, baffled contact tank, some sort of iron manganese dioxide based backwashing media system, followed by a softener. Also purchase a powered anode for your water heater, this will usually greatly reduce the odor in the hot water.
 

Reach4

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I would lean toward h2o2 injection, baffled contact tank, some sort of iron manganese dioxide based backwashing media system,
No carbon tank? Set the H2O2 injection level so there is very little residual?
 

Mountain Stream

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I am very grateful for your input - for your experience in the field. This is the independent information on AIO that I am in desperate need of understanding. It's remarkable how many claims are out there. Solutions are all over the map. Quick results with a cursory web search gives the following:

Iron Buster: 11 ppm iron, sulfur, manganese
Pro-Ox: 5 ppm. Higher with chlorine side tank
Flex Oxi-Gen: Up to 10 ppm, pH 6.5 to 7.8
Sanitizer Plus (combined iron filter and softener): Iron 8 – 15 ppm, 6.0 min pH. (other restrictions apply).

Complex! The web sites don't discuss maintenance. Granted, some try to steer buyers toward the H2O2 systems.

Why is Pot Perm rarely used anymore?
 

Skyjumper

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skyjumper: What experience/problems have you had with your air injection?
the theory of AIO is that you cause the dissolved Fe to precipitate out by exposing the water to an air bubble at the top of the media tank. then the media physically filters out the precipitate. in practice this really doesn't work very well (my opinion). most of the ferrous iron stays in solution and passes out of the filter, and the stuff that does get caught serves as a breeding ground for iron bacteria and the slime they produce. a crude way to test the effectiveness of air oxidation is to take a glass of raw well water and aerate it with a coffee frother for a few seconds and watch what happnes. if your water is like mine, nothing happens. there is no precipitate.... so how is the filter going to remove the iron?

to improve the effectiveness of AIO you can use certain medias (mno2) that will remove some of the iron so long as there's some dissolved O2 in the water. This is what I do, and when its working it removes about 60% of the iron. If I don't clean it regularly it does nothing or can even make the water worse. In theory ozone further improves on this because it is a more effective oxidizer than air, but that assumes there's enough ozone in the air bubble to make a difference, and that it stays there and doesn't dissipate.

contrast this with the ion-exchange process of a water softener where the ferrous iron is directly removed from the water by the resin beads. it is a much more effective process than trying to precipitate the iron and physically filter it. but the problem with ion-exchange is you then have to find a way to get the iron out of the softener resin because salt regeneration won't do it. That's where resin cleaners like Rescare, citiric acid, and https://www.crystalclean.us/ come in. Because of the challenges with removing large amounts of entrapped iron from a softener it is not the best choice for high levels of iron like your 6ppm, but it will work if you are diligent about resin cleaning and have a big enough softener. my local water guy claims he can remove 10ppm with a softener and rescare alone. I have my doubts.

more likely you'll have better results with the peroxide or chlorine approach. it might be ineresting to mix some of each with your raw water and see what happens.
 

WorthFlorida

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The problem with using a water softener to remove iron is it never pans out. When I worked at Sears, the salesmen and the brochures alway made the statement that it can remove up to 3 or 4 ppm of iron. So the water report reads 2 ppm of iron. After the install the customer tests the water again and guess what, the iron level is the same and they were usually pissed off.

The resin bed of a softener was never designed to remove iron, but iron sticks to the resin and slowly coats the resin where the ion exchange is nearly stopped. It's more of a byproduct and marketing gurus decades ago jumped all over it. This is where Iron Out and other products come in. Bagged salt pellets usually has an iron remove chemical in it and all kinds of names are used. With iron or no iron, a product like Iron Out should be used at least once a year. You be amazed how must rust comes out of the softener after an iron remover is used.
 

ditttohead

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When it comes to iron, the chemistry of the water is very important. Without a complete water report, companies simply can not make proper claims that their units will work. When it comes to iron reduction, we have a lot of little tricks that we use to effectively reduce iron but we always use words like reduce, mitigate, lessen, improve... never absolutes because when it comes to many contaminants in water, without pilot testing there is simply no way to know if a specific treatment process will work. We can use our experience and formulas to get fairly close to a good solution. This is why companies with lots of experience tend to over design the equipment. AIO may work, it will work better with AIO3. It will work even better with h2o2 injection, and better yet if we first raise the pH... Follow the iron reduction with a softener, the ferrous iron that gets through will likely get "exchanged" onto the softener, followed with a 1 micron polishing filter to catch any ferric iron that breaks through... or you can go online, read that XYZ system will work amazing!!! Install it, and then have lousy water and a nightmare of maintenance...
 

Mountain Stream

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I have had some companies use AIO3 designs with 20 ppm iron successfully for a short amount of time, but these systems tend to be too high of maintenance.
What strikes me is how small these optional adds to AIO systems. I cannot grasp how they could have any significant effect. Would you please share what level of maintenance is required with a full residential O3 system?
 

Mountain Stream

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Well, I've been further researching options. Here are the recommended systems from vendors and the negative comments from other vendors, in [brackets]:

Softener. [It will not get the metals out - will not disinfect.]

Oxidizing (Air) Iron Filter with Magnesium Oxide Media followed with Softener. [Air will feed the Iron or Sulfur-Reducing Bacteria and will form sludge in the valve and tank].

Same Iron Filter with Ozone, added from a small ozone generator option, during Backwash. [This is a gimmick or at least mildly effective in reducing sludge.]

An industrial ozone generator, circulating pump and tank, followed by cartridge filters (sediment, carbon and something ???). [Cannot effectively remove the contaminants from your well and the filter will be frequently clogged.]

Same iron filter and softener arrangement as above, but preceded with an industrial ozone generator, circulating pump and tank. [Belts and suspenders – too costly.]

Same iron filter and softener arrangement as above, but preceded with chlorine injection and followed with activated charcoal filter to remove chlorine. [Chlorine is a carcinogen and it should be avoided.]

Same iron filter and softener arrangement as above, but preceded with hydrogen peroxide injection and followed with activated charcoal filter. [Very costly chemicals in the long-run.]

It seems that everyone and their dog sells iron/manganese/sulfur filters. Everyone has the best product and everyone else does not. The spectrum is vast. Further complicating the subject, there are a myriad of opinions/suggestions on the web.

I'm not trying to become an expert, but I would like to get into the neighborhood of the right application. Of the options listed above, has anyone had firsthand experience with these systems, not already addressed in this thread?

Thanks in advance!
 

Gsmith22

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I can categorically state that you shouldn't even attempt to use a softener at your level of iron. My iron is so low (.065 mg/l) that the softener can in fact take care of it but that is the level of iron at which you should consider a softener workable. you have 100 times that amount.

My personal feeling is you would be wasting your time with the various AIO options and chlorine or hydrogen peroxide injection followed by a contact tank are your only real options. Yes remove chlorine and byproducts with carbon tank but lets get real - the entire world uses chlorine to disinfect municipal water so the carcinogen concern seems potentially overblown. I would be remiss to point out that the reason municipal water doesn't have ferrous iron is because the chlorine turned it into ferric and it precipitated out before it gets to your home. So chlorine (or h2o2) injection does work. Don't ignore dittohead's advice re lower pH in post 14. may need to run water through calcite to raise pH to help with iron removal (if injection at your pH doesn't work as intended).
 

ditttohead

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Calcite can be effective for raising pH, and it will also remove a significant amount of iro in many applications. We recommend daily backwashes if you go that route, you should see a significant amount of iron being sent to drain during the backwash cycle of the calcite. Iron reduction is not that difficult, it really comes down to budget and realistic expectations. The bigger the budget, the better your water quality can be but there is also a point of diminishing returns. Finding the balnce of reasonable budget and good water quality can be difficult.
 

Reach4

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H2O2 and chlorine (bleach solution) systems are actually rather similar. Usually you can switch from one to the other.

H2O2 is a little more reactive for the iron. From what I have read, a residual of as much as 25 ppm is permitted in city water. H2O2 annual expense is usually not that much once you figure out how to get it. Test strips are available. Here are my notes on that, not checked or compacted recently:
For water treatment, H2O2 sensitive test strips
Sensafe Low Range Peroxide Check
https://sensafe.com/visual-tests/?_bc_fsnf=1&Parameter=Peroxide
https://sensafe.com/waterworks-peroxide-check-lr/ stand alone....
https://sensafe.com/exact-strip-micro-hydrogen-peroxide-low-range/
uses a device to make the readings more accurate. The photometer is expensive.
I am not sure what photometer models it takes. 525nm I think eXact® EZ Photometer is one of them.
https://sensafe.com/chlorine-exact-ez-photometer-starter-kit/
eXact® EZ Photometer plus calibration stick... Is eXact® EZ Photometer with some strips (not H2O2 included).
https://sensafe.com/exact-photometers/?_bc_fsnf=1
https://sensafe.com/exact-idip/ seems cheapest...
eXact® EZ Photometer has auto-zero.
https://sensafe.com/content/486205.pdf is manual.
https://sensafe.com/meters-page/?sort=featured&_bc_fsnf=1&Parameter=Peroxide (best link )
https://www.zoro.com/lamotte-test-strip-hydrogen-peroxide-pk25-2984/i/G2254655/
https://www.zoro.com/industrial-test-systems-test-strips-peroxide-0-4ppm-pk50-481015/i/G3992475/
https://www.zoro.com/search?q=peroxide test (comes up with other stuff)
https://www.hach.com/hydrogen-peroxide-test-kit-model-hyp-1/product?id=7640218476

Chlorine is handy, and the tests to measure concentration in the residual are more widely available and cheaper. A residual of as much as 4 ppm is permitted in city water. Chlorine kills bacteria better.

My main point is that using one or the other is not a permanent commitment.

For both ways, you would much prefer to have a contact+settling tank after injection. You would want a blowoff valve to remove settled sediment. You want a sampling port (boiler valve) between the contact tank and the GAC. You want another after the GAC.

https://terrylove.com/forums/index.php?threads/29ppm-clear-iron-well-water-please-help.89258/ may have some info for you.
 

Mountain Stream

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I'm trying to poke holes in each option and you are doing well to patch them with good advice and experience. I feel better about the technologies described. Now, I need to settle on the best bang for the buck. Thanks!
 
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