A good friend of ours bought the land next door. They just got the existing well wired up and working. It has been sitting unused for years and the water has a bad smell. No one else up here has that issue. Any ideas of how to clear it up?
Well water
- Thread starter Terri9630
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I've got an article someplace, but people with real experience will be along in a bit. IIRC, it involves "chlorination" and water turnover.
easier to find than I thought
easier to find than I thought
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That's what I was thinking. They called a couple of well companies but who knows when they will call back.
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Yup.
Pour clorox down the well and run the water until you cant smell the bleach anymore.
Ben
Yep........first let it pump what is in the well casing for an hour or more. Then in the evening pour in a few "quarts" of cheap bleach.........let it set over night...........run it for an hour. Repeat if necessary. I actually do that with "new" wells also.
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Thanks y'all. I'll let them know when they come back up.
I have done that before too.
I bought a place down here years ago with a well. It had to pass 'water-test' before the mortgage company would finance it. I talked to the 'water test lady' and she told me this:
Open every faucet in the house.
Prime the well with Clorox and let it run for an hour before you call me to test.
She took a sample from every faucet.
I passed with flying colors
.
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They don't have any faucets yet!
Decades ago, every house down here had it's own water-softener/treatment system.They don't have any faucets yet!
Guess why they did that?
There are so many things that can make water nasty but not dangerous.(especially sulfur)
Tell them I said: "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater". (sorry, couldn't resist)
Decades ago, every house down here had it's own water-softener/treatment system.
Guess why they did that?
There are so many things that can make water nasty but not dangerous.(especially sulfur)
Tell them I said: "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater". (sorry, couldn't resist)
They said it has a sulfery smell. I can't breathe or smell right now so I don't know.
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Don't go crazy with the bleach. You can smell the chlorine from the bleach in your water at a concentration of 0.2 parts per million. That means, if you dump gallons of bleach down your well, that means that you'll have pump 1000s of gallons out of the well before the chlorine smell is gone.
The link below describes the amount of bleach that should be used to disinfect a well. Once you pour the bleach down the well casing, you show run your garden hose back into the well casing, to circulate the bleach into all of the water in and around your well casing.
https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/water/wells/waterquality/disinfection.html
The link below describes the amount of bleach that should be used to disinfect a well. Once you pour the bleach down the well casing, you show run your garden hose back into the well casing, to circulate the bleach into all of the water in and around your well casing.
https://www.health.state.mn.us/communities/environment/water/wells/waterquality/disinfection.html
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Now that is more complete answer.
But since you are a guru in this area..
Say we dont know how deep the water is in the well ...
Could one start with a small amount of bleach then run the water while checking for the smell of bleach?
If we dont smell bleach gradually add more until we do smell it?
Stop adding bleach and keep ruuning water until the bleach smell goes away?
Curious
Ben
What my dad used to do is to pump the well dry, go down in the well and dig out all the accumulated mud and before the well began to refill he poured a gallon jug of bleach down the sides of the concrete walls of the well, that well had way too much iron in the water, so much so that coffee and cream were very dark, in those days water filters were not available. Yeah, water that sits without being refreshed can get a heavy sulfur smell and taste to it, I remember the time a few years back that I finally installed a hose bib on a closed line I had going to the south side of our home, when I cut the PVC pipe to put on the hose bib the water and gases that came out of that line smelled like hydrogen sulfide, rotten egg smell, once the water was ran for awhile, the smell went away.
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Does your well casing have a label on it with an identification code? (Such a label has been required in many (all?) states for decades.) If there is a code, you could look up your well information at your state's health department's website. If there is no code, you could attempt to measure your well depth and water height by using a cotton string and weight. This method is hit and miss because of the torque arrestors that may surround the drop pipe.
Otherwise, I think the method you suggested would work. If you can smell bleach (chlorine) it is at a sufficient concentration to kill pathogens. Just make sure you start out by mixing/circulating the bleach with the well water by running the garden hose into the well after you add the bleach.
Many county websites list all wells in the county with information like well depth, static level, pump rate, etc.
I've found that it doesn't take that much to get rid of a lot of bleach. My old well when I had an acreage was 130 ft deep with a 3 inch case and there was approximately 124 feet of water in the casing. We dumped a metric crap ton of bleach in it. (I think it was actually about 4 gallons.) The well had been unused for about 7 years. After letting the bleach set for a little bit, we started the pump and ran it till it drew down past the level of the intake at about 22 feet below the pump. Did that three times and no more smell. Other than a high level of lime and iron, the water was just fine...
