Well water/filters for iron?

[Jumper_girl221]

Just curious if anyone has any suggestions or thoughts for a low level filter or softener that would work for a barn?

We do have one for the house, but it was crazy expensive and goes through salt like crazy, so I’m not head over heels at the thought of a second one for the barn well. The water comes out clear, goes cloudy with a film, then yellow by the end of the day. If it sits for about 24 hours, the water goes clear, but there’s yellow film/gunk at the bottom of the trough. I’m dumping and scrubbing water buckets daily, but they are still quite nasty looking.

Horses don’t care and are drinking well…but it does weird out some boarders and myself!

Just trying to think through some options, maybe have a filter for the water that goes to teh troughs and barn, but we can past over for the wash racks?

[gumtree]

We have 2 wells on our farm. One that is on the “hard” side of “soft” water. The other well is much deeper and has a high iron content.

The “yellowing” effect occurs when the iron in the water comes in “contact” with oxygen. Which happens when the water is being “drawn” through the horse and exits. It “oxidizes”.

There is no “cheap fix”. Yes you can use a filter on the line and it will filter out a lot of the iron but depending on the iron content it will clog/fill up pretty quickly. I tried a big filter.

All that collected iron in the filter starts to oxidize pretty quickly. So when you turn a sink faucet on you will be looking around the room wondering who farted. Even worse when taking a shower.

This might not be much of a problem in a barn. But as I said above you will go through filter pretty quickly. Not expensive but not cheap either. The filter holder/canister will turn dark orange quickly so it has to be scrubbed out each time so you can see the “state” of the new filter and when to change it. The oxidized iron turns into a gooey sludge also.

The only “fix” I know of cost around $1,500 - $3,000 for the necessary equipment.

We had a sign in our guest bathroom, “iron in the water, it has been flushed”.
Forget about being able to keep/get clothing, sheets etc. white. Iron is attracted to “body oils” and “spots” these things. PITA.

My wife complains how it turns her hair orange. Been promising to install a whole house system for while now.

Would be very interested in what others have installed for their house. I’m getting a lot of pressure to do something about it.

Have gotten a couple of very different opinions on how best to deal with it from the people that sell the equipment. Big swings in prices.

[Mosey_2003]

We have an inline filter for my quarry office, the thing effing SUCKS. It would probably need a new filter weekly to be truly effective, and they haven’t given me one in years. Save the time and effort and just put a real softener on it.

[2DogsFarm]

I have a Kinetico system for my house and it’s doing a decent job plus uses hardly any salt.
IIRC it was about $3K installed.
Not sure they are in your area, but this should tell you:

http://www.kinetico.com/locator/

Where I used to routinely go through 80# of salt w/rust remover in a month, now I have to remind myself to check the level and probably use that same amount over several months.
Some BigCity guests still complain about the taste of my water, but I can drink from the faucet & no smell.
I keep a Britta pitcher & bottled water for the faint of heart.

Why bother for the barn if horses are drinking?
My only complaint is the oxidized rust scale that coats the insides of my buckets & 50-gal barrel trough.
I scrub with bleach, but it sticks to the plastic so whatever scale does not scrub off is left.
Hasn’t bothered the horses or compromised the operation of my heated buckets & sinking de-icer.

[Jumper_girl221]

^ That’s my issue 2dogs, the buckets and troughs just look disgusting, cloudy, then nasty milky yellow with a film and the rust stains that are impossible to scrub out. We tried digging well shallower for the barn in hopes that would help…in a coastal area so we can’t go deeper or we hit either sulfur or salt. The barn isn’t QUITE as bad as the house well honestly, but its still gross.

gumtree, the whole house water softener system we have takes care of it as long as we keep the salt levels up. Because the water is so hard, plus the iron, we had to get a special type of system that flushes itself daily. You can’t even tell though…the water was awful, just running a bath it looked like you were bathing in sweet tea, toilets get stained deep orange within a day when the salt runs low. Water smelled and tasted like it was wet pennies. With the system the water has that ‘soft’ feel you get from a softener, but its clear, stays clear, and no odor.

Two bags of salt last for about 3000 gallons. I have two boys, my husband, who takes 2 20-30 minute showers a day, and my 7 year old son that takes 45 + minute showers (and somehow comes out with dry hair scowl) that plus the laundry we go through it pretty quickly! That and the system was $1800 and I don’t really want to cough that up for the barn!

Thoughts on a smaller softener working for teh barn?

[Frog_Pond]

gumtree has nailed all of the key points.

We have a well with very high iron in the water and a brand new 7k Evolve filtration system for the house that involves a pressure tank, three sand tanks and a salt tank, and it still only does a B+ job :no:. It gets out the orange, but leaves a touch of yellow. I have seriously considered re-drilling the well to see if they can hit water that isn’t so obnoxious. Most of my neighbors have the same problem, but not all. It’s a crapshoot.

I have two horses in a barn with no power or water that is 700’ rocky, uphill feet away from the house. I have a frost free hydrant installed directly into the well cap by my house, and in good weather, I run hoses to the barn. The water in their stock tank has both iron sediment on the bottom and a skim of iron on the surface that appears, as gumtree noted, after oxidization. The horses drink it, no problem, and I use a pasta strainer – the cheap screen kind, with a plastic handle – filled with hay to screen off the film. This works great. I ignore the sediment, except I probably dump and scrub the tank more than I might with normal water.

I drove myself crazy trying to figure out a simple DIY barn-water filter. My water filter company told me I was nuts, but they’d be happy to install a filter up there – after I ran power, drilled another well or ran water, and gave up precious barn space to an insulated, heated room for all of the pumps & tanks. Not gonna happen!

The closest-to-feasible solution I found was a DIY sand filter. You can google: IRON REMOVAL BY SLOW SAND FILTRATION, By Bunny Mah, Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, Calgary for an interesting article on how to do that.:eek: I decided to just live with the water. :yes:

I’d love to hear any other ideas on this topic. It’s my secret, sad hobby :lol:

[Sunnyhorse]

We have a filter for the house–after having to redrill to sink our pump lower when people built houses around ours, the water stank terribly and was turning sinks and toilets orange/yellow because it contained so much iron and sulfur. The system filters the water through potassium permanganate, which is really cheap. Takes forever to go through a container of the stuff.

[Calamber]

We have a whole house three filter system (sand, carbon and calcium pellets) which cost a bit more than Gumtree quoted, ($6,000) but with no salt filters as the salt is leeched into the ground during backwash and it leeches calcium from you.

https://www.lifesourcewater.com/ It works perfectly, water is crystal clear, no deposits anywhere and sweet tasting. It was undrinkable before and was destroying appliances and the porcelain surfaces.

And yes, it was turning my red hair orange plus we had sediment issues as well.

[Frog_Pond]

[QUOTE=Calamber;8302906]
We have a whole house three filter system (sand, carbon and calcium pellets) which cost a bit more than Gumtree quoted, ($6,000) but with no salt filters as the salt is leeched into the ground during backwash and it leeches calcium from you.[/QUOTE]
Right, this is something else to consider with salt filtration – you used to be allowed to divert the backwash to a dry well, but at least in MA, which is heavily impacted by federal & local inland wetland regulations, you now have to send that water into your septic system, and the salt is very hard on the pump filter and leach field. Our septic guy hates our water system. We pull the filter ourselves monthly & knock out the sediment. And by we, I mean my husband. :lol:

[HungarianHippo]

Very hard well water here, and the kinetico whole-house system is working great, it’s going on 6 years i think?
I would not invest in a solution for the barn, when it’s really just a cosmetic problem. In your shoes I’d stock up on extra buckets and a spare water trough, and get a pressure washer. Set aside the gunky buckets and trough, and have a bi-weekly pressure wash session. They’ll be sparkling clean.

[Humblepie]

joining in on the misery. We have the same issue (Central VA) and have been through several systems over the past 20 years. Our first system used a chlorinator that dropped chlorine pellets into the well when the pumped kicked on. Chlorine acts on the iron in some fashion (beyond my understanding…) as it came into the house it mixed with something else (don’t remember) and then filtered through several tanks. It was wonderful. Expensive to maintain though. The pump and chlorinator got hit by lightening several times and we had to find another system as our homeowners quit helping us with replacement costs.

We now have a salt system with one filtration tank. Our plumber sends us reminders to change the filtration material in the tank every year or year and a half. That is what makes the system work the best.

There has to be an answer out there…and someone will be very wealthy when they figure it out!

In the meantime I’m off to scrub buckets and water troughs.

[SuzieQNutter]

Why not put in water tanks and use rain water?

[naynay117]

This is a money-saving PSA on iron and softeners. Sorry OP I dont know what system would be cheap and effective for a barn, which would use a much larger quantity of water than a house.

A number of years ago, I bought a home with this problem: sulfur smells & yellow/orange staining. The seller must have scrubbed his sinks every day while that house was listed;). I couldnt stand to drink the water.

The well water was high in iron and manganese but under acceptable levels. The well water was neither hard nor soft.

This was a number of years ago, so the technology may have changed but in my research I found out that a softening system is not very effective on iron or manganese. A softening system just acted as an expensive mechanical filter. All the local-yocal vendors I put the water results out to were pushing these expensive, and expensive to maintain, softeneners that were not going to fix the problem.

I used a system from these guys and had my plumber install it:
http://www.budgetwater.com

Get your water tested and then start educating yourself on what your well system really needs. A water softening system does not remove iron, it softens hard water…so save your money if someone tries to sell you a softener when you dont have hard water.

[My_Two_Cents]

We use Oxy Blast water treatment. I was a skeptic because our water was horrible. We had water filters that had to be changed every few weeks. We had ugly stains everywhere we had well water. I can actually drink the water now. It treats the whole farm. I no longer have to scrub water tanks every week. It was about $1200 startup but worth every penny. We have a dozen horses at home and we go thru about 15 gallons of product in 18 months. Sure wish I would have done it sooner. No. I don’t sell the stuff.

[poltroon]

We have a 2500 gallon tank with an ozone system (UV light) between our well and the house/barn supply. No other filters. Has protected the plumbing very well.

Not cheap though. ~$4500 which included the tank, pumps, and labor to install all the new piping, and several years ago.

[clanter]

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