Well water + filter questions from a newb...

[Heinz_57]

Upon moving into our new mini-farmette, we discovered a serious lack of water pressure. After (phone) consulting with the pump service guy, we changed out the filter in our system and voila! Back to normal flow and it doesn’t take me an hour to fill one water trough (we were down to 2-3gal/min, max!).

However.

We’re now going through a filter every 10-14 days, with a serious concentration of iron. Filters become clogged with orange slime and tap water smells and tastes very iron-y, toilet collects orange slime, etc. :no: No diminished water flow unless we put off switching it out for 4-6 weeks, though.

If I had to guess, I’d say that the previous owner did not change the filter on any regular basis, but the water didn’t taste or smell of iron until after we started switching them out. Filters are all the same style/model of “whole house” filter - water goes straight from the tank through the filter and then through the UV filter system, to the house.

Is this going to be “normal”? We were hoping that after a few filter cycles, the built up sediment from the previously unchanged, super-clogged filter would diminish and we’d see a longer lifespan on the filters, but it’s not happening.

tired of my shower smelling like someone is bleeding out!

[twelvegates]

Around here, after having the well water tested at the Department of Health, if there are any nasties that need correction, you dump a bottle of Clorox in the water, turn on ALL the taps, and let them run until you don’t smell the chlorine.

But since your problem in iron, and not bacteria, I wonder if you saw this:

http://wellwaterguide.net/iron-well-water.aspx

[jbonifas]

You should have your water tested befoe you go to any more expense but I have a whole house filter in front of my water softener. The whole house filter traps the big junk and the water softener gets rid of the rest of the small solids. You might need to enlarge the micron size of your filter, if the size is too small they clog quickly. I use 3 to 5 micron size that looks like wound up string or a charcoal type and change the whole house filter every month. The water softener uses salt to recharge the cleaning ions (what ever they are called) and you set how often it recharges per gallons of water used. I use about 3 bags of salt a month during the summer but less in the winter. Your local Ag Agency might offer some help but I’d hit up the neighbors to see what kind of systems they have.

[ReSomething]

We rented a house once and it had serious iron in the water, so much that for years after we moved I was pulling out plates and scrubbing them with comet to get off the residue - and forget washing clothes! Anyway, to reduce the iron the landlord did the bottle of clorox every year and installed a standard green sand water softener. It helped somewhat but we bought bottled for drinking water.

[rodawn]

A softener will do nothing for your iron problem. The iron will still be there. A softener just adds salt to your water which reduces the hardness, but some people have a hard time drinking this sort of water. I cannot drink it because the salt makes me swell up like a balloon. There is no filter anywhere in the market to remove the salt added by a water softener because it is not considered a toxin - only a reverse osmosis system can remove salts, but this system wastes a huge amount of water. For every gallon you get, it wastes between 2-3 gallons and then where does the waste water go? (To your septic tank).

The better solution is to just remove the iron with an iron filter. These self-flush on a weekly or twice weekly basis and last many, many years.

http://www.rainfresh.ca/iron_filters.php

The iron filter will prevent staining in your dishwasher, washing machine and thus your clothes, your toilet, sink and shower, etc.

You can get your water tested which will tell you how many parts per million your iron concentration is. But reality is, if you can taste the iron, then you have a fairly high concentration of iron in your water. The higher the concentration of iron, the faster the iron bacteria growth develops in the system which adds a significant foul smell to your water, especially noticable in the hot water coming through your showers!

When you smell that foul iron bacteria smell it is a strong signal that your well needs to be chlorine shocked. It’s a little task to perform about once a year or once every 2 years, depending on how heavy the iron concentration in your water is. Even if you have an iron filter, you will still need to shock your well periodically. This is just for your safety since all wells are considered to produce RAW water. Shock chlorination treats your well and makes it safe for you to drink, brush your teeth with, and use in the shower.

http://www.prairiewaternews.ca/back/vol5no1/v51_st5.html

and

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/wwg411

It’s a process that must be done precisely, but it can be done by yourself. You need to go to a company that does a lot of well-water drilling. They will have the chemicals you require and should be willing to provide you the detailed instruction sheet to follow and sell you the chemicals. You definitely get what you pay for. Don’t try to find these at some joe-bloe store. Go to a real, bonified well drilling company. They’re the pros and they carry the professional products. We shocked our well last year and bought our chemical from a professional drilling company and it has lasted through to this year. We will probably shock our well first thing next spring.

[draftdriver]

here is such a thing as iron-loving bacteria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_bacteria

[mpsbarnmanager]

[QUOTE=rodawn;6599992]
A softener will do nothing for your iron problem. The iron will still be there. A softener just adds salt to your water which reduces the hardness, but some people have a hard time drinking this sort of water. I cannot drink it because the salt makes me swell up like a balloon. There is no filter anywhere in the market to remove the salt added by a water softener because it is not considered a toxin - only a reverse osmosis system can remove salts, but this system wastes a huge amount of water. For every gallon you get, it wastes between 2-3 gallons and then where does the waste water go? (To your septic tank).

The better solution is to just remove the iron with an iron filter. These self-flush on a weekly or twice weekly basis and last many, many years.

http://www.rainfresh.ca/iron_filters.php

The iron filter will prevent staining in your dishwasher, washing machine and thus your clothes, your toilet, sink and shower, etc.

You can get your water tested which will tell you how many parts per million your iron concentration is. But reality is, if you can taste the iron, then you have a fairly high concentration of iron in your water. The higher the concentration of iron, the faster the iron bacteria growth develops in the system which adds a significant foul smell to your water, especially noticable in the hot water coming through your showers!

When you smell that foul iron bacteria smell it is a strong signal that your well needs to be chlorine shocked. It’s a little task to perform about once a year or once every 2 years, depending on how heavy the iron concentration in your water is. Even if you have an iron filter, you will still need to shock your well periodically. This is just for your safety since all wells are considered to produce RAW water. Shock chlorination treats your well and makes it safe for you to drink, brush your teeth with, and use in the shower.

http://www.prairiewaternews.ca/back/vol5no1/v51_st5.html

and

http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/wwg411

It’s a process that must be done precisely, but it can be done by yourself. You need to go to a company that does a lot of well-water drilling. They will have the chemicals you require and should be willing to provide you the detailed instruction sheet to follow and sell you the chemicals. You definitely get what you pay for. Don’t try to find these at some joe-bloe store. Go to a real, bonified well drilling company. They’re the pros and they carry the professional products. We shocked our well last year and bought our chemical from a professional drilling company and it has lasted through to this year. We will probably shock our well first thing next spring.[/QUOTE]

Good post. I may have missed it, but do you have an actual water softener now? Just saw you mentioned a filter. Call “the culligan man” or anyone else in your yellow pages, they will come out and test you water for free, and tell you what the ph, iron levels and everything else are, and offer you an estimate of what equipment you need. Several people have mentioned bleach going somewhere, if I am not mistaken they mean pouring bleach into the actual well itself. This is what they did when we had our wells drilled.

When we moved into our 55 year old house a few years ago, we had to have a new well drilled, and I remember him saying it was only to kill bacteria introduced by the drilling process, not sure what else bleach might to to improve the water.

Our iron content was so high that in addition to a new water softening system we also needed an iron filter. Not a little home depot filter, it is the same size as the softener! It makes a HUGE difference in the barn! Before, we had so much iron that it left a oily looking film on top of any water, stained the CRAP out of our waterers. My great uncle is a dairy farmer and he pointed out that if we didn’t get the big iron filter, it would eventually clog all our new plumbing in the house and in the barn! He had it happen to him on his farm.

[mpsbarnmanager]

BTW the bad smell is probably sulfur. Smells like rotten eggs, esp when you first turn water on.

[My_Two_Cents]

http://www.essentialwater.net/

We have used Oxyblast water treatment system after changing filters every few months for years. Sure wished I would have heard about it sooner. I can even drink the water from the faucet now. It also helps keep the water tanks clear of slimy growth. Our plumber would have given us back every penny if we weren’t happy. You couldn’t pay me enough to take it out now. We have used it for about a year and a half.

[atr]

We had the same problem with our newer well. Lots of water, at last, but it was very overloaded with suspended iron, which can be a bit stinky as well as turning your life orange.

We had the plumber come in and put a big (24" long), somewhat coarser, carbon filter unit in line between our well and the finer, foot long, filter. We change it about every 12 weeks. Works great, and is a simple solution.

In addition, we have a filter in the fridge for our cold drinking water, but my husband prefers the water straight out of the kitchen tap…

Our downstairs cold water taps are unsoftened and the outside/barn taps), the rest of the house goes through the water softener.

[4LeafCloverFarm]

SPAM revived really old thread. Reported.

Keto diet spam on well water thread. That’s a new one! lol

[secuono]

The pump may be too low on your well or not enough water in it, causing the mud.

We have a whole house filter for the mud, $300 or so. It automatically back washes weekly.

Then we use a tap filter for our drinking water. We don’t filter water for anything else, animal water, laundry, showers, so on.

Have your water tested, you might find unpleasant things you need to be filtering for or bleaching.

[Bluey]

Spam post 11, reported.

This is another old thread resuscitated by spammer.

[enjoytheride]

Our water softener removes the iron and we use iron pellets in it. I think the " We also have one of those string filters in front of the softner, the water pressure does slow way down if you get too tight of a filter or let it clog, but at least your shower isn’t orange.

You can’t taste salt in softened water, and it adds so little salt it doesn’t cause problems for most people. If you can taste salt something is wrong with your machine. There are alternatives to salt.