Pool service in Navasota for people whose water comes from a well

Well water fills clear and stains later

A lot of pools around Navasota are filled from a private well, because a lot of Grimes County is not on a municipal line. The groundwater here is hard, and it commonly carries dissolved iron and manganese. That combination behaves in a way that catches people out.

Iron dissolved in well water is invisible. The hose runs clear, the pool fills clear, and everything looks right. Then you chlorinate. Chlorine is an oxidiser, the iron comes out of solution, and it lands on the plaster as brown or orange staining, usually within a day or two of the fill. People assume they were sold bad chlorine or that the plaster was faulty. Neither. The metal was in the water the whole time.

Filling a well-water pool the right way round

• Test the well before the hose goes in, because well chemistry varies property to property and a county-wide average tells you nothing about yours.
• Filter the fill if the iron is high enough to justify it.
• Add a sequestering agent before the chlorine, so the metal is held in solution when the oxidiser arrives.
• Bring the chlorine up gradually. Shocking a freshly filled well-water pool is the single fastest way to stain it.

Doing it in that order costs a bit of patience. Doing it in the wrong order costs an acid wash.

Try the gentle fix before the harsh one

If the staining has already happened, the instinct is to reach for an acid wash. That works, and it also takes a layer of your plaster with it. A pool surface only has so many acid washes in it before resurfacing becomes the conversation.

Metal staining usually lifts with ascorbic acid treatment followed by a sequestrant to keep the iron in solution rather than letting it settle back out. It is slower and considerably kinder to the surface. We would rather spend an afternoon on that than shorten the life of your plaster.

The part that matters more is not repeating the cause. A pool that keeps being topped up from an untreated well will stain again by the end of the season, and at that point you are treating a symptom on a schedule.

Ten miles from Washington

Our base is in Washington, TX, roughly ten miles from Navasota. That makes Navasota one of the two closest towns we serve, and it means rural Grimes County is normal work for us rather than an exception we grumble about. Acreage properties and places a good way off the farm-to-market roads are on the route.

Our other regular routes run to Brenham and College Station.

Everything on the service list is available here: weekly cleaning and chemical balancing, equipment repair, automation, resurfacing, and emergency callouts.

Written for Navasota pools

Longer pieces on the jobs people call us about most here. Each one goes further into a single subject than this page does.

• How to choose a pool service in Navasota, covering what each service tier actually includes.
• Weekly pool cleaning and maintenance, and what a route visit covers.
• What pool maintenance costs in Navasota, with the variables that move the number.
• Leak detection, which is worth reading before you assume you have a leak rather than evaporation.
• Pool pump repair, including what counts as an emergency.