We live in South Texas and have been in our new house 1 year. We have copper piping throughout the house.From the beginning, we noticed green flakes in our toilet/ sink etc. We have had the water tested from inside the house and it has 6-8 times the legal EPA limit of copper in our drinking water.The flakes were tested as copper oxide. None of the neighbors have this problem.
We get our water from a well. THe water at the well before it enters the house has been tested seperately, and found to have barely detectable limits of copper in that water sample.
We have had about 10 samples done from inside the house over a 10 month time, and they all continue to confirm the excessive amounts of copper. These samples have been taken from all over the house.
The builder tried to flush the lines as they believed it was excessive flux caught in the lines. They used a high powered generator to flush the lines, then ran clorine, then flushed the lines again. This did not help. All connections have been tested for electrolosis, and no electrolosis can be found. Currently we have a water softener and reionizer machine, but that has not helped either. No connections that can be seen are with dissimilar metals.
Any ideas or suggestions short of replumbing our house?????
Replies
Check the pH of the well water. A friend in Northern Virginia had to rip out all his copper pipe and replace it with plastic because the well water is too acidic for the copper to survive- it all developed tiny holes. GOing from copper to plastic sounds really weird, bot that's what it took in this house. You may need more water treatment equipment to adjust the pH, because even with plastic pipe, acidic water can eat faucets, washing machine parts, or metal fixturs.
If the house is one year old, I would be contacting the manufacturer of the pipe. I hope you've saved all of the documentation of what you've just told us.
Rich Beckman
I'll watch this thread also, as I've similar but much longer term situation - on an 18' surface water well (non-chlorinated, nearly neutral PH) and after 30 year DW started seeing green deposits on tub. (me colorblind= cant see).
Have also considered switching main feed line in warm portion of house to plastic. Only costs a few bucks (exposed in basement) to do, will likely do this winter and see what the change is.
Reionizer? Would that be a deionizer you have? If it is it may be the cause of the problem. I'm no water expert but I do know that deionized water is corrosive and will dissolve some metals.
http://www.goodwaterco.com/e-comprob.phtml