Wednesday, July 25, 2007

I hate well water!

Actually, just the water that is coming from my well right now.

I switched to running the pump for five minutes every three hours and that was fine for awhile. Then the water became cloud despite the very fine filter on the line. I had a 5 micron filter in the canister but don't think I had it screwed in as tight as I should have. Some super fine particles were getting through. I tried with all my might and managed to tighten the filter housing another half a turn and that seems to have stopped most of the fine sediment from getting in. unfortunately with half the cistern filled, I'm not happy with what is in there. So tomorrow, after going birding in the morning, I'll be running out to purchase a couple more filter cartridges. Then I'll have to pump the 200 or so gallons I've already collected out and start all over again.

I'll stretch things out a little more too, by going to five minutes every four hours. (It'll be just like when the kids were babes and had to get bottle fed during the night, I guess.) Scheduled pumping at 8, 12, and 4 and repeat. I get about 2 inches of water every five minutes so with a depth of about 30 inches,two days of pumping should do the trick...if the well don't go dry.

Of course, being as it's only about 135 feet down, I guess i could get a driller in to punch it down a bit further, say another 100 feet. But even that could produce a problem. Some wells in the area (I'm not sure how close to me) have had some sulfur problems. I don't need that!

5 comments:

GUYK said...

That is a bummer...and if it is getting through that fine of a filter it is some tiny silt...

I am fortunate in having an excellent well..just a 100 feet into a limestone aquifer and it is sweet and pure. I use no treatment nor filter of any type. I had it checked back in March and it was still sweet water..some trace minerals but nothing that needed treatment.

And so far I have not been able to pump it dry..I have 1 1/2 inch tubing hooked to a submersible pump
and have run it up to 24 hours at a time. Tough on the electric bill but I had to know how much water I had...

gregor said...

our well of over twenty years is finally getting to the point that i'm concerned about the quality of the water, even though it tests ok. the development in this area (monmouth county) has been rampant and i can't help but think that the aquifer i'm tapped into is starting to either get played out of is being contaminated by something. the water is taking on a very sour odor that nothing seems to eliminate. it looks like we'll have to hook up to city water, which i dread.
you might want to look into a two stage filter before your system and maybe one after. good luck.

GUYK said...

gregor..there are some outstanding well treatment systems that will make your water fit to drink. In fact I know a lot of people that have installed these systems on their 'city' water inlet because the city water is undrinkable because of the chemicals in it..

joated said...

hey, we've got a state of the art filtration system. It's just not able to handle the very fine particles that are currently coming through the pipes. Ive got the filters down to 5 microns and may have to search out some 1 micron cartridges once I have the cistern filled again. (I believe Wal-Mart may actually have them in stock!)

The water is no longer reddish but there is some cloudiness to it. In a glass, it looks clear.

We had the water tested last fall and everything was just peachy.

Hopefully this is just an aberration, a burp in the system, so to speak, and things will get back to what they were when/IF the rainfall picks up. (We've only had one inch all month and that was in two storms that lasted, maybe, 12 hours between them.

joated said...

re: Rain

Last summer, while we were constructing our home, we seemed to get one or two thunderstorms each week. They dumped a sizable amount of rain but, luckily for us, usually took place very late in the day or over night. Kind of like Camelot. I'm sure that boosted the amount of groundwater considerably.