Potassium Permanganate (Pot Perm) Is Not the Solution

Do You Have Smelly or Staining Water?

If you have rotten-egg (sulfur) smell or staining from iron or manganese in your water, you may have heard that manganese greensand with a potassium permanganate regenerant is the answer.

If you are talking about a residential home, we respectfully disagree.

What Is Potassium Permanganate?

Potassium permanganate (“pot perm” for short) is a non-organic chemical compound, a dark-purple crystalline salt.

The water treatment industry has used manganese greensand filters with potassium permanganate to filter particles and clean water for years. These filters offer an economical approach toward achieving the minimum treatment results required.

At face value, manganese greensand appears to be a one-size-fits-all solution, but this is only under perfect conditions. These ideal conditions are a combination of pH, flow rate, and the chemistry of the elements being removed. Water chemistry parameters must be within a narrow, specified range.

Since optimal conditions are rarely met, performance can be below what you want in your home. The media used in these filters is very heavy, and some homes are unable to maintain the pumping rate required to adequately backwash (clean) the greensand.

Potassium Permanganate water

Magenta Pink Water Staining

Small amounts of pot perm are left behind in the media bed. Pot perm is dyed purple, so the buildup creates a pink water condition as it dissolves later. This problem may arise immediately or build up over time.

The pink water alerts the homeowner to a failure in the system. A severe pink or purple water condition may result any time the pump rate drops below the rate required for the size of tank installed.

Potentially Hazardous Chemical

Pink water is bad enough, but potassium permanganate is potentially hazardous. It is sticky and may eventually gum up your system valve, causing it to fail even if maintained. Valve failure can result in a flood that can stain your basement floor, damage personal property and furnishings, and may even cause harm to a person in contact with the material.

For your reference, you can check out the MSDS Sheet for Pot Perm.

We Thought It Was Good Enough…

For years, Secondwind was happy to install manganese greensand in homes that fit the required criteria. However, over the years, this led to a nightmare of customer dissatisfaction.

Problems included:

• Manganese refused to oxidize and filter
• Ferrous iron would incompletely oxidize and then pass through at higher flow rates
• Hydrogen sulfide would still be present sometimes causing the rotten egg odor.
• Only intermittent success with arsenic removal

And then finally, the purple floods.

…But Not Anymore

One by one, we’ve removed almost all the manganese greensand systems we ever installed, including one in the home of our president, Christine Fletcher. In each case, we worked with the customer, hoping to regain their satisfaction and loyalty after this disappointment.

Christine remembers a customer who had a pot perm flood that damaged a wooden rocking horse she was saving for her grandchildren. It was heartbreaking.

We simply refuse to put our customers and their belongings at risk in this way any longer. We believe that a treatment that produces the minimum results required is simply not good enough for you.

What Is the Solution?

The solution to this problem is to design a multipart water treatment system tailored to your water chemistry and home. By investing more now, and dividing your treatment into pieces, you can have years of great satisfaction from a reliable water treatment system. Contact us today to learn more.