Fed up and ready to tackle my well water issues

9 years ago

I've been reading posts trying to educate myself for this process and wanted to see if anyone can help advise me on some of my specific issues before I call in the local pros. I have a shallow well drilled in about three years ago in conjunction with construction of our new house. The well has a fairly slow production rate of 7 gallons per minute or so. For that reason, we have an 80 gallon storage tank before the pressure tank.

Even before we moved in I began noticing orange stains along the water lines of the toilets and then realized we had orange stuff in the toilet tanks. After we moved in I noticed that when I make tea it turns a nasty shade of black. I discovered that those things suggested iron bacteria. In late January I shocked the well with chlorine hoping to finally get rid of it. A little over a month later I had the water tested. The tests indicated that iron bacteria is still present, but gave no indication of amounts. General information:

No coliform or e.coli.

Residual chlorine from shocking the well: .29 mg/l

Hardness: 166 mg/l

Iron: .15 mg/l

Manganese: none

Nitrate as nitrogen: 6.91 mg/l

Sulfate: 37.06 mg/l

Hardness: 166 mg/l

pH: 7.01 SU

Alkalinity: 272.5 mg/l

TDS 424.2 mg/l

There is a note stating that there is a "large quantity of sand and mineral sediment," having particles too numerous to count.

I tested the flow rate on the outside spigot closest to the pressure tank and got 4.8 gallons per minute.

We have 3 bathrooms and a powder room. There are two tubs (one is a monster soaking tub), three showers, two of which have hand showers that can be used at the same time as the shower head. Just two people in the house most of the time.

The hardness, the iron bacteria, the sediment or some combination is plugging our shower heads and the screens on our plumbing fixtures. I've replaced the toilet valves and flappers repeatedly because in short order they start running continually. And the black tea is really unappetizing, so we've been bringing in bottled water for tea and coffee.

Sorry for the treatise! Does anybody have any advice on how to treat these issues?

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Comments (3)

greasetrap
9 years ago
Do you have any kind of filtration in place? If I were you, I would talk to both a driller and filtration co.

I had a new well drilled 3 years ago, and my driller told me that code requires a certain combination of water production and well depth. The idea is that a deeper well acts as a reservoir of sorts to make sure the well never runs dry. 7 gpm doesn't sound like much to me, and I think that the storage tank is an insufficient shortcut. If your well runs dry, you may be able to compensate inside with the storage tank, but your pump will still be sucking up air and sand. A deeper well might also tap into better quality water. Finally, if you're only getting 5 gpm water flow, the driller might have put on an undersized pump to make sure the well doesn't run dry. A deeper well with a higher-powered pump should solve a lot of your flow problems.

If you have iron bacteria, my understanding is that only a chlorinator followed by a sediment filter will remove it. The sediment filter will also remove the sand and other mineral content. You'll probably want to follow this with a carbon filter to remove the chlorine. If the water is too hard, a softener generally works pretty well.

I'm not an expert though, so hopefully some of the pros here can give you more specific advice. Good luck.
User
9 years ago
If you are actually referring to 7 gpm makeup flowing into your well, that is decidedly NOT slow water production. There are many wells operating successfully across the US with 0.25 gpm makeup. If your well is so shallow that is has essentially no water capacity, however, that would be a problem.

You have several major issues to deal with:
1. Sediment. Unfortunately, continual high sediment indicates a problem with the well - too shallow, insufficient capacity, poor location, etc. It can be dealt with, but I would still be talking to a well driller about options. Generally sediment filtration should be the first step in water treatment.
2. Iron. At present we don't know if your iron is ferric (particulate) or ferrous (dissolved). If it is ferric, it can be removed by sediment filtration. If ferrous, another method will be required.
3. Hardness. At about 10 gpg (grains per gallon) your hardness is certainly high enough to cause buildup in your water heater and in your shower heads, particularly in combination with the sediment in your water.
4. Few people in the home, combined with high-flow fixtures. This makes equipment sizing more complicated.
When you have iron in your water, it is very difficult to eliminate IRB once they have established themselves in a well. If you have chlorine residual and tests still indicate IRB it could be cross-contamination during sampling or inadequate chlorination of the well.

Even if you do eliminate the IRB, you will still see staining from the residual iron in your water - it takes very little to cause visible rusty stains on fixtures.

There are lots of options for iron removal - I'll provide a brief list in a separate post. You really ought to get a local pro on site. With your water conditions, the ability to turn over water treatment to an on-site expert will be very helpful. Have you spoken to your neighbors about their water? Do they have the same issues? They may be able to suggest a good local pro.
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nutherokie
Original Author
9 years ago
Thank you for your input Greasetrap and Aliceinwonderland.

Greasetrap, we have a 10-inch sediment filter cartridge between the well and the storage tank and another between the storage tank and the pressure tank. Most of the wells in our vicinity are similarly shallow. When we drilled our geothermal wells we hit a larger volume deeper, but it was really iffy water. 84 grains per gallon hardness and lots of dissolved solids and sulfates. For some reason, iron wasn't tested.

Aliceinwonderland, yes, 7 gpm is our approx. makeup flow rate. I wasn't sure how to test volume for the house since we have the storage and pressure tanks. I think we could run multiple spigots and get similar 4-5 gpm rates simultaneously. We've never run into a shortage issue. As for the iron, from what I've read, I believe it is in solution ... ferrous? The water is clear out of the tap anyway.

I'm planning on calling in the pros, but wanted to try to learn my general options in advance, It seems that placing my wide-eyed trust in our various local gurus has not worked out particularly well on any number of issues, if you know what I mean.

The only neighbors I've spoken with who have softeners use Culligan and don't seem too thrilled with their service. There is a Kinetico dealer in our town and an outfit that uses WaterCare/CareSoft products. I seem to recall some criticism on this forum of the WaterCare equipment. I'm not sure what other options I might have. I've talked a bit with well a few well drillers, but they haven't had any recommendations other than "dump a couple gallons of Chlorox" down the well now and then.