*
I had a new well driven four month’s ago. About a month after It was installed we noticed a funny smell coming from both the hot and cold sides of the water. I’ve had several tests done on the water since then(Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons, Iron,Bacteria,And Hydrogen Sulfide) all showing nothing abnormal. The Water testing facilities owner, seems stumped while I’m left with almost three hundred dollars in water tests. My problem is the smell, it’s hard to describe almost like a tar smell somewhat mettalic,all faucets have it, which to my knowledge rules out the anode rod in the hot water tank. I live in Oakland County Michigan. The well is 4″ Driven, With a standard tank at approximately 60 feet. I would appreciate any suggestions.
Discussion Forum
Discussion Forum
Up Next
Video Shorts
Featured Story
Source control, ventilation, and filtration are the keys to healthy indoor air quality. Dehumidification is important too.
Featured Video
Builder’s Advocate: An Interview With ViewrailHighlights
"I have learned so much thanks to the searchable articles on the FHB website. I can confidently say that I expect to be a life-long subscriber." - M.K.
Replies
*
Odors are caused by very small amounts of materials, so most testing will not find it. Very sensitive instruments would be needed. Your $300 would get you only the first few runs of a gas chromatograph run; if you wanted a mass spectrograph curve of the output, you won't be getting it for that price. So, before going that route, more detective work should be done.
If you did not have the smell at first, something has probably changed. Anything happen inside the house? Anything happen around your well, including driving heavy equipment?
Speaking of the well, what kind of casing does it have? And how is it capped?
Has there been any construction nearby? Do your neighbors have a similar problem? If so, are they on one side, indicating an aquifer contamination plume? Are there any chemical plants nearby? Old gas stations? Did you do any painting with oil paints and throw the old stuff on the ground? How about old crankcase squeezings?
A 60 foot well is not that deep. Unless you went through rock, surface contamination could seep down fairly easily.
*The TPH tests I have run on water samples are more sensitive than ones nose for gasoline, aromatics and diesel. Unless it was with a high (50-100 ppb) detection limit (i.e. a flame-ionization detector was used in a screening test) I would take a negative result as ruling out fuel or lube hydrocarbons. Certainly if a photo-ionization detector test such as EPA Method 8021 showed non-detect, then I'd look to other sources.Ask your well driller and ask other well drillers. If it is a naturally occurring compound, they will have encountered it in the same formation in other wells. Call up your state department of Ecology or Natural Resources or Whatever they call it and talk to a toxic waste site caseworker for your area. Ask what known and suspected releases are in your area. Often underground storage tank (UST = gasoline) sites are in one program and other contaminants (pesticides, solvents, metals, etc) are in a another division of the same agency. I know of a lot of plumes that go under residences that the homeowners are unaware of. But all the investigation reports and clean-up orders are matters of public record. If you ask. -David
*Mark,I assume you are working with the Oakland County Health Dept. on this well. For the last several years there has been quite a bit of attention paid to high arsenic levels in certain areas of the county - especially the north and west parts.Your well man is supposed to be making reports about what he encountered on the way down. And JohnD makes an excellent point about the 60 foot depth. With those swampy, sandy and gravelly soils in the area, you're drinking surface contamination.I'll bet in additon to these funny smells, you may not be getting good flows at that depth due to ribbons of clays also found in those parts.A couple of years ago, I had a 225 footer drilled in Groveland Township before I got good water. And that was my third. The 100 footer kept running dry and had lots of iron. The 130 footer plugged up.See all of those old cottages around the lakes in the area? Most of them have about 50 foot wells with their neighbors septics within gurgling distance. They have lousy water! My mom lives in one and I just had a new 140 footer put in for her. Much different taste.You gotta go deeper as well as talk to the county. Your health depends on it
*Another resource to check is a local office of the USGS. They often have a hydrologist who will know a great deal about ground water in your area and what might be in it, and where it may come from.
*Another point. Although the fact that you say the smell comes from both hot and cold may dispute this, but...I used to get really stinky water from the hot side. (The cold was OK.) I changed the hot water heater and no difference. So I called the hot water heater's manufacturer and they sent me a new anode made from a different metal. Well, that helped some for a while, but it would really get bad when we would go out of town and come back to use the water that had been sitting in the tank for that time. Once the tank had flushed out, the smell would go away.In with the papers from the new anode rod, the manufacturer had included a report put together by their research people that attributed this smell to naturally occurring anaerobic bacteria found deep in the ground. This particular bacteria seemed to multiply faster at the temperatures found inside the hot water tank and the smell came from their by-products.Their suggestions involved either treating the well with chlorine, pouring bleach in the resin rinsing water of the water softener, or letting the water run first before showers by doing laundry or running the dishwasher.So the question becomes, does it get better after the hot water has been running for awhile?
*I appreciate the advice. To answer some of your questions, no heavy equipment has been driven over the area other than the well truck itself. The well is located about 7 feet from the edge of the driveway and 15 feet from the house. The old well that we had for 30 years was located about fifteen feet from the new well. We never had any funny smells from the old one, but the old one was a jet pump not a submersible like this one. Theree are no gas stations oron-residential structures that would have required a gasoline storage tank anywhere around. No gasoline,solvent or other chemicals are ever disposed of carelessly. None of the neighbors have this problem but ours is the newest well on the block by 10 years. The only thing that the well guy said was that he went through alot of HARD clay on the way down. He also did a chlorine treatment after the well was installed. one additional thing is, i've got two seperate filters before the water softener. One is a sediment filter and the other is a carbon filter. Which have been lasting me about a month. When i go to change them I can smell that same odor there which tells me that the source of the problem is down in the well. I want to thank all you guys for your suggestions and hope that this information helps to figure out what I'm up against. I also plan on calling some state and local agencies to see what they have to say. Thank You!
*Just a thought but have you checked the water at the well-head for odor, BEFORE it hits the filters? Filters can sometimes concentrate contaminates that affect taste and odor.
*Did I understand correctly that the well is only 4" in diameter ? Wells around here are typically about 4 b feetin diameter. Is this a regional thing or something ? How could a 4"well produce enough capacity for a house ?
*You still bring your water up in a bucket, Ron????
*And why is the tank at 60 feet??
*MarkWhat kind of pipe do you have running from the well to the house? Plastic pipes are permeable meaning taste and odours can leach from the soil thru the wall of the pipe into the water. Any type of petroleum product present in the material used to backfill could be the cause of your problem.
*> You still bring your water up in a bucket, Ron???? Uhhmmmm....Nope. The wells around here are 4' in diameter concrete casings capped off at 10' below the ground. There is a 10" diameter PCV pipe that comes up to the surface. Most of them use submersible pumps. I assume they wells are bigger in diameter for added capacity. Seems like you could pump a 4" casing dry pretty quick unless the water was really rolling in fast.
*Ron:Here in Central Virginia they ( State Health Department) no longer approve new bored wells. Here a bored well is 2' in diameter made with those concrete casings and typically 30 feet deep. They now approve drilled wells. Here that means a deep well, drilled between 100 and 600 ( real bad cases)feet deep, 6 inches in diameter. The well casing sticks about 2' out of the ground and goes down to the top of the rock they drilled through. This casing is usually 6.6" PVC. A bennonite grout is pumped around the well casing at ground level. Cost about $10.00 per foot. They keep drilling until the water flow is 10 gal per min or better. These wells are artesian in nature. So like my well is 240 feet deep and rated at 60 gal per min, but the first water found was at 110 feet. The pump is hung at 100 feet, as the artesian action makes the water rise high above where it enters the well. Not 5 miles from here people have 600 feet wells that are dry holes or maybe 2 gal per min flow.Different areas have very different well action.Frank DuVal
*Frank: I learned a different definition of "artesian", namely that the water from a spring or well is under enough pressure to come to the surface, once the hole is drilled. That's pretty rare but can occur below a mountain or hillside where groundwater recharge takes place. Many wells into lower aquifers have enough pressure to bring water up in the casing well above the screened interval. That's not artesian. It is not even an "confined" aquifer unless the pressure of the lower aquifer (the elevation to which its water will rise) is above that of the upper aquifer.Different areas do indeed have very different hydrology. While soil bearing values might vary a thousand-fold form one area to another, hydraulic conductivity and well yields can vary a million-fold from gravels and coarse sands to tight silts and clays. Some wells produce thousands of gpm and others only yield tens of gallons per DAY (usually not considered a well, but us environmental engineers sometimes have to use them).
*The pipe I have coming in from the well is a 1" poly pipe (black) not sure of the trade name. Spoke with my water guy suggests additional softener stictly for taste and odor. Any suggestions?
*
I had a new well driven four month's ago. About a month after It was installed we noticed a funny smell coming from both the hot and cold sides of the water. I've had several tests done on the water since then(Total Petroleum Hydrocarbons, Iron,Bacteria,And Hydrogen Sulfide) all showing nothing abnormal. The Water testing facilities owner, seems stumped while I'm left with almost three hundred dollars in water tests. My problem is the smell, it's hard to describe almost like a tar smell somewhat mettalic,all faucets have it, which to my knowledge rules out the anode rod in the hot water tank. I live in Oakland County Michigan. The well is 4" Driven, With a standard tank at approximately 60 feet. I would appreciate any suggestions.