High amount of iron in well water - all solutions have failed so far - orange everything

[Dalearyous]

Background
I had a regional water-right rep come out and look at my current setup, test my water, and propose the most optimal solution if money, time, and space were no issues. he is widely regarded as the best around here by other contractors and companies that do well work and water filtration. the problem is his solution is thorough but requires a lot of space and hardware that isn't possible for another 6 months maybe a year once we expand the house (for other reasons). so I would love recommendations on how to handle this. toilets, clothes, dishes, showers everything is getting ruined or requires cleaning every other day with iron out. there is enough iron getting through that its hardening on the surface of standing water.

Water specs
iron 15ppm on average, tested as high as 19ppm before
PH 6.0
TDS 74
Hardness 0

Current setup (in order of water flow)
well - pressure tank - hydrogen peroxide injection - water-right sediment filter with turbidex - catalox UV filter with fleck 5810 - .5 micron cartridge filter (its like 3ft tall)

Question
what minimal steps and hardware can I get to at least get this under control. the water-right sediment filter is the newest item and I added and honestly, for about a week the water was amazing after install. but then it went back to being orange and smelling bad. what would you propose I do? I know the well is fine and closest neighbors do struggle with this but their iron is a bit lower and they have their system constantly serviced (which I would like to avoid).

 

[Zenon2cubed]

That's a lot of iron, I would contact Impact water products.

It looks like your pH will also complicate matters.
Below is a table from the cleanwaterstore.com, they also say the following on iron removal:

pH - pH refers to the relative acidic or alkaline nature of the water. The pH scale is from 1 to 14. A pH of 7 is neutral;
less than 7.0 is considered ‘acidic’ and higher than 7.0 is considered ‘alkaline’. Iron filters operate within a certain pH
range, usually 6.5 – 8.5.

Ideally, the pH should be 6.8 to 7.4 for the best results with iron filtration. If pH is acidic, correct pH to 6.8 to 7.4
using a soda ash feeder or calcite neutralizer. The exception to this is when you are using ion-exchange resin (i.e.
water softeners) to remove iron.

 

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[Dalearyous]

yep. which is why the guy recommended this:

optimal solution
well - pressure tank - soda ash injection - chlorine injection - 120 gallon retention tank - 120 gallon retention tank - 120 gallon retention tank - turbidex filter - carbon filter

i just don't have the space for this solution at the moment. but im also considering taking some space from one of the kids rooms because i am tired of dealing with this.

 

[Zenon2cubed]

Turbidex looks to be just a filtering media opposed to Katlox light or the others in the table above that both filter and breakdown iron, so I'm not sure turbidex is "optimal", but given you already have the filter I'd also be tempted to reuse it.


If it avoids renovating your kids room maybe you could try the setup with only one contact tank. I think that would be worlds better than present state and adding contact tanks later can still be done once you've completed the expansion.

Instead of a backwashing carbon filter, you may want to try an AIO catalytic carbon filter in the interim setup, the AIO filters can handle about 5 ppm, if the chlorine and single contact tank can handle the initial 10 ppm you might not even need the additional contact tanks, the AIO feature can be programmed out if you decide it's not what you want.

Re-bedding the turbidex with an oxidizing media like Katalox light would also help chip away at those 15 ppm.