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.
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.
If you have read many of these columns, you know that water wells and pumps in Michigan are regulated by our Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). Several years ago, the DEQ asked industry members to participate in what is called the Director’s Water Well Advisory Committee.