Manufacturers tried many ways to change clear-water iron to what, in effect, is rusty water iron. Finally somebody figured out a relatively simple way to aerate the water and oxidize the iron.
The manufacturers in the water conditioning industry had long realized that a successful filter had to get the iron from solution, or invisible, to suspension, or visible, iron. How to do this seemed to baffle everyone for a long time.
Captive air tanks did away with the problem of water logging and also gave the customer far less rusty water than the old-style pressure tanks because the water in the tank and the air were completely separated. This, however, created a whole new situation regarding iron filtration.
Most of us in the water well industry know our areas well enough to be able to preplan a well and go to the location with the right tools and equipment. But sometimes we run into the unexpected.
In years gone by, my father and I sold a number of cartridge-type filters to customers who had rusty water. After several years, we began to investigate other types of filters that would work on ferric or visible iron.
Looking at a water map of the U.S. recently, I noticed that most of the Great Lakes states — which include Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota, plus the non-Great Lakes state of Iowa — all have groundwater that is classified as very hard.
