Hard water woes

lovesBup

I've been using sun liquid detergent. I would love to use tide powder original but I do my diaper laundry at my dads house, and he is convinced that powdered detergent will ruin his septic. My problem is that he has water so high in iron it turns his clothes (and my lighter colored diapers ) orange. After the first few washes my diapers got a funky metallic/stale water smell to them so I tried adding calgon to the wash. It's helped a little but I can still smell a bit of that funky stink.. and I'm really not sure what else I can do. My wash routing goes: cold rinse-warm/cold wash with detergent/calgon- cold rinse (I also put a little calgon in the softener dispenser for the last rinse)..

I could try a different detergent, but sun free is really the only liquid detergent I can find locally that is good for CD's, and I would rather not have to order detergent online (unless of course my dad would consent to powder.. I would try RnG hard rock) I'm really frustrated at this point. I want to rid of this stink, but I feel like 9/10 of my options are out of the question because I can't use powder detergent.  

moussy

I thought my parents were the natzi's of the septic tank when we were growin up and my mom always used powder.  Can you use iron-out salt in the softener?  I'm just not certain beyond changing the detergent or getting an iron filter:(

bethandjoe09

What makes your dad think that powder will ruin his septic?  I'd try finding info on that first.  It sounds like if you can convince him your options will open up.

lovesBup

Will the iron out be safe for her skin?

I did some googling and I guess the deal with powdered detergents is that they tend to re-solidify and cause buildup on the inside of the tank. I'm going to do some more digging and see if I can find a safe detergent, or an effective way to avoid/remedy buildup. I think I also read that that more natural detergents tend to cause less buildup because they don't contain plastic and other fillers. 1ht