Also note that iron isn't usually in a sediment when it's coming up from a well. Depending on what he's seeing (ie whites in the laundry going blotchy yellow or uniformly yellowing) it can be dissolved iron or iron bacteria.
Each has it's own treatment process. For dissolved iron you can get away with something as simple as a chemical-free (air contact) iron filter which is going to break the iron out of solution by injecting air into the main. The air contact allows the iron to break out of solution and is then filtered as sediment. Small amounts of iron can sometime be reduced by the use of a water softener that is mean to remove iron (only difference from a regular water softener is that the bed is fluidized during the backwash cycle and is circulated from the bottom to the top of the tank) or else by a manganese greensand iron filter using potassium permanganate as a oxidizer to break the iron out of solution.
For Iron bacteria you need a little bit of a different approach. The usual method of dealing with it is chlorine injection and contact time. Chlorine is injected at a concentration of 1 ppm in the main water feeding the house. It is then fed through a contact tank giving it ample dwell time to do it's job and is then removed with an activated carbon filter.
Hope you can get it dealt with!!
Disclaimer : This is all with reference to dealing with rural well based water but has application to city supply as well.
|