Got Water?

[David Houck]

Unless you have some health issues iron reducing bacteria are innocuous. By boiling the water you are actually concentrating any iron or other metals in the water.

Yeah; I just boil it to get rid of the smell.

[peoplechipper]

The Alembic chat room is awesome; no matter how big your brain and all the stuff crammed into it, something will come up that you know almost nothing and for me that moment is now...thank you.

[edwardofhuncote]

I have very much enjoyed where this thread went, as I don't often get to do a lot of looking at the small-scale products that are available for home systems. Operators at water plants tend to deal in pretty big numbers.

In a related story, the kid that plays fiddle with us (swear I'll quit calling him a kid when he turns 30...  ) lives not far from me, and has roughly the same source water, very low pH, which of course means very high iron, manganese, sulphur... etc. Whoever built the house he bought put in some system I've never seen before that uses some liquid form of copper-sulfate to recharge the media, sort of like a manganese greensand filter uses potassium permanganate... anyway, I assume it's some kind of ion exchanger, but can't figure the thing out. This much I do know - it ain't workin'.  Sharp, huh? 

Iron is the stereotypical 'big one' in these parts... it's plentiful in the Earth's crust here, and soft, aggressive, low-pH water strips it (and other stuff) right out and into the water table. Luckily, iron is easily oxidized returning it to solid, (ferrous >>> ferric) and easier to remove. One time I designed a contraption that (woud have) made my well pump pump out of a diffuser into a series of plastic barrels. I pictured something like a couple shower nozzles, just anything to aerate the 'raw' water, then allow the iron to settle as it passed through the sedimentation barrels. Would have been a maintenance headache... but then again, they all are to a degree. 

[keith_h]

The Alembic chat room is awesome; no matter how big your brain and all the stuff crammed into it, something will come up that you know almost nothing and for me that moment is now...thank you.

Ah. Our water doesn't have an odor so I've never dealt with it. As I said earlier all we ever had was a couple  of drains where the bacteria set up shop before we got the iron filter. As I recall reading the only way to get rid of the smell is to aerate or charcoal filters. Boiling would be a form of aeration. I can't vouch as to how effective charcoal would be in your typical canister style whole house filter you see at the home centers as they are pretty small.  You mentioned you had a charcoal filter already. Does the water smell when drawn from the wellhead? Does the smell clear up if you let the water run for a while? It might be that the bacteria have established a foothold in your pipes. If they have I think the only option is treatment which as you've found isn't cheap.

[David Houck]

Shocking the well should get rid of bacteria in the pipes since the bleach is sitting in the pipes overnight.

This time of year the smell is not too bad; and if it's like last year, the smell may go away sometime soon, to return when it warms up again.  I haven't checked the water at the wellhead.

I think I'll wait until next spring when the weather is warmer, shock the well with a bit more bleach than I've used before, let it sit in the pipes a little longer, and then see where I am.