Rust in Well Water

Does anyone have any info they can give me about rust in my well water? The well is about 1 yr old. I have a sediment filter in front of my water softner, but still get stains on my fixtures. Is there a filter available, or some other fix for this?

Thanks

Steve

Reply to
SteveW
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You could have two problems: Dissolved iron or suspended iron particles (rust).

Suspended iron particles make orange water. The particles will eventually settle to the bottom of a glass of water. Your sediment filter should take care of that, depending on the type of filter media used.

Dissolved iron isn't visible in a glass of water but will stain fixtures. A water softener will fix a mild problem but special iron filters are needed for bigger problems.

-rev

Reply to
The Reverend Natural Light

If it is just a case of dissolved iron, you could just ignore it and clean your fixtures.

Don't take that as a snide remark -- I clean our pre-school fixtures every other week with a very strong rust-remover product. Comes in little brown bottles, and you aren't supposed to let it touch your skin. A few little squirts, maybe a little spreading it around with a paper towel, and the rust stains just wash right off. Once every two weeks is plenty in our situation, except for one very heavily used sink, which gets kind of ugly by the two week mark. (12 Kids times 5 days a week!). I'm sure there are lots of similar products that work equally well as the brand we use.

If you can't

Reply to
kevin

If that little brown squeeze bottle is "Whink", I don't know of any other rust removers quite like it on the market. If it is Whink, take those precautions seriously, it's hydrofluoric acid, HF. If you're using it in a school, I'd keep it locked up when not in use, and post the MSDS just in case:

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That said, yes, it sure does work! Be aware that HF will etch some fixtures so that their surface gets cloudy and picks up stains faster in the future. But if you have a bad rust problem already, that's not much of an issue.

Reply to
Joshua Putnam

And I'll add that the best way to treat staining is to remove the cause of the stains, not to treat the symptoms; the resulting stains.

Regular softeners can remove up to 1-2 ppm (mg/l) of ferrous, clear water, iron. And if you buy right, others will remove up to 5 ppm of iron.

Although a softener should not be used as a filter, although resin is a fairly good filter, only a few brands of softeners, actually the control valves used, require a prefilter. Most prefilters will cause more problems than they cure. They ca nactually cause the softener to be unable to remove all the iron in the water. If the water is clear when drawn, no softener requires a prefilter; IOWs it's more marketing than factual if someone suggests a prefilter simply because you are buying a softener.

Any softener that is allowing rust stains on fixtures needs a resin cleaner periodically and/or it is not sized correctly and/or is missing certain internal features to assure removal of the iron found in the raw water.

Gary Quality Water Associates

Reply to
Gary Slusser

Yup, "Whink" is the stuff. No, I don't touch it (wear big gloves, lots of rinsing after with cold water). And yes, we keep it locked up at all times, except for the few hours when I come in on weekend evenings to clean. We keep practically everything locked up -- soap, detergents, vinegar for cleaning, etc. Thanks for the link on the msds -- I'm not sure I realized quite how bad it is...

-Kevin

Reply to
kevin

I had rust coming out of one spigot in my house. It's the cold water that goes to my shower/tub. I never used it because I never set the thermostat on my water heater hotter than I can stand when I bathe. Then, I started drawing off cold water occasionally from the tub into 5 gallon buckets and found the water quite rusty, especially when I first started drawing it off. Having kept up this habit, I've found that the rustiness has disappeared at least to the extent that I never see it. I noticed a similar effect when I first started using the pipes for my washing machine. All I'm saying is if you just started using the well, you may find that the rust was in the pipes and may diminish at least to the point where you don't see any rust as you continue to use the well. AFAIK, a bit of rust in water isn't a terrible problem. It's not lead, for instance.

Dan

Reply to
Dan_Musicant

I had a deep well with a metal casing that was unused for a few years. Started using again, first the water was real muddy looking, after running a while finally cleared up.

After using for a while noticed that brown sediment was forming in the toliet tanks. Put a whole hose filter on and clear most of that up but have to change the filter every month or will clog. Determeined must be the metal casing on teh deep well rusting.

Are there any other types of filters, like self cleaning, that does not use the cartridge elements or at least would not have to be changed so often to get rid of the rust ?

Thanks MC

Reply to
MC

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