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

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

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

In article .com,
says...


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 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: http://www.whink.com/msdsrr.pdf

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.

--
is Joshua Putnam
http://www.phred.org/~josh/
Braze your own bicycle frames. See
http://www.phred.org/~josh/build/build.html

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

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

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

Dan_Musicant wrote:
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
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