Fast forward to adult me and once again I live in a house with well water and a septic system. The water here is mineral rich and iron heavy. There was a Water-Rite water softener system in place but the minerals in the tank needed to be recharged to the tune of about 1k. That got bumped down to low on the list of things to spend money on. The only time you saw the red was down at the barn when you first turned on the water or any faucet that had sat unused for a length of time. There were also black specs which kind of freaked me out at first but they turned out to be manganese and iron.
There was one place where the issue was a struggle and the reason I was struggling was I refused to learn from my past. I kept throwing bleach at the problem. All my whites were either a dirty yellow or shallow reddish color and they were brittle. I mean like crunchy sounding and feeling. There was nothing soft about that cotton t-shirt or those sheets. I was even soaking whites in a bucket of bleach water before washing to try and keep them/get them white. (Clorox says that it’s bleach is perfectly safe for septic systems if used in the amounts recommended for laundry. I choose to not put things down the drain that could damage the delicate bacterial dance going on in that tank. You ask what did I do with the bucket water? Well ask the poison ivy.) Enter chemistry. 
You can read the rest of the article from www.hydrohearth.com here. I have not fact checked all the info on the site, I picked it as a good example of the chemistry behind the problem as well as some ideas of how to handle it. As always do your research, get your water tested, and consult with experts so that you do not damage any of your systems.
After realizing that every single white clothing items we owned needed to be retired because once the chemical conversion has happened in general there is no going back. I decided to take a page from my past. Those who do not know, or remember, their history are doomed to have yellow, crunchy whites. I had this vague memory of my mom and grandmother doing laundry and using a powder with the whites. I can also vaguely remember asking why and being told, “Because that’s how we do it with well water.” To the interwebs! What is this white powder that these women knew about? Is it still available to purchase? Why does it work?
The product is called Iron Out. Frankly it should be sold with a little cape that flutters out behind it and a pair of arms with fists positioned on it’s little imaginary hips.
The company Summit Brands has a whole host of products now. This was my gateway drug. You can find more information about the company and this product here. I think I might still have a bottle of bleach around here for other things but most of it was donated to the animal shelter. I don’t use this every time I wash whites just because, septic. I grew up living in terror of the thing buried in the lawn that would someday rise up and destroy all that I knew and loved. Beware the tiles (this one is actually more farm field related)! Beware the tank! Beware the drain field! Don’t rush, think before you flush! It was a weird childhood. We had a water softener till it died. Who can blame it. I think they replaced it maybe once, possibly twice and then dad said nay.
Water softeners alone cannot fight the battle, you need more. We did replace ours. There are tons of options out there and lots of information and recommendations. We decided to go with another newer model Water-Rite Sanitizer Plus. We factored in our water, our septic system, and what is available near us. These are expensive 6 or so years ago we paid over 5k for ours, installed. You need a licensed dealer and those dealers have territories and they will not go outside their territory if another dealer exists in it. We know this because we started having a problem with the unit not working properly it was not drawing the salt up. Our installer wasn’t returning our messages and more than a year went by. I finally called another local dealer who referred me to back to our guy. We gave it another shot and called him again and this time he immediately got back to us. He felt awful it had been an issue with his phone system. He felt so bad that he came and did the entire repair for free and showed Bill exactly what happened, what needed to be replaced, and how to do it. One tiny little part had clogged and needed to be replaced. The cost of the part, under $10.
Having a great whole house system makes SUCH a difference. It does allow me to skip washes without everything turning brittle and gross. I do still use Iron Out from time to time to freshen things up and remove other stains. I also use Iron Out from time to time to clean out toilets, sinks, tubs, shower doors etc… Yes, the glass doors of our shower surround have been etched over time and will never be crystal clear. Hard water and a dying softener unit take their toll.
For everyone out there who has been wondering why they cannot get their whites white. It might not be you. Get your water tested. If it’s in your budget think about adding a whole house system into your mix. Or wear that crunchy and own it like a boss!
Bonus section: Pools and well water. First filling a pool from our well actually made me kind of sick with anxiety. What if we use ALL the water! What if the pump decides this is to much and just stops? What if the pipe down to the pump ruptures from the demand of running a hose into a pool for a day+? What if….. Okay it did fill. I know you can actually call people to come fill your pool and I thought about it. We have another issue here, you can get a big truck up the driveway but how do you get it back down? Not a lot of places to turn a big truck around up here. Bill can back a semi down the driveway and has had to do it for a driver who wasn’t confident. Me, I struggled to get a mini van facing forward down the drive without hitting an ent. Plus I was sure that the weight of a heavy truck full of water would cause the asphalt of the driveway to collapse. I do feel slightly vindicated on that one because we did have heavy trucks up here after the fire and the driveway did take a few hits. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it, don’t listen to Bill being all reasonable and calm.
Any who, so the pool, filled with well water. Well water that never came through the filtration system (and thank God for that or I would have added new fear into my list of things to worry about at 3 a.m.). That water was red, a pool filled with red water, and a child who would just go stand out by it looking in. We tried all the standard treatments. We were not new to owning a pool we have had one before. We read all the labels on all the products. Nothing was working, we could change the color but not make the water clear. I think we even tried a salt water filter, which saw what we wanted it to do and almost immediately died. Enter the interwebs, on some obscure website blog page I read this simple tip. Just put a white towel on your filter. As the water from the pool is pulled into the filtration system it has to go through the towel. The iron/manganese/rust will get trapped in the towel fibers. Lo and behold it worked. I think it took a day or two but the water became crystal clear. The towel was a former towel, now more of an iron bar but holy cow. No harsh chemicals, no buying products, no buying specialty filters or systems just an old towel. Did it have to be white? That part I don’t know. Did it maybe have something to do with the fact that I had used bleach on that towel previously? Maybe. Did it have to do with the fact that the fibers had no dyes in them? Maybe. I think it was a cotton towel but I don’t remember. AI does not recommend doing this. Pool Tips, USA has a whole article about dealing with it, nothing about using the towel trick. If you continue to search the internet you will also find people claiming that the trick works and videos showing you how to setup filters. Stay safe, do what is right for your situation, and practice common sense.
