All,
You may have seen my recent posts about my water-well trials and tribulations – (“Lemonade from a Lemon of a Well).
Long story short, I have a 930′ heckuva good producing well, with a pump set a 750′. I now have to have it tested by the state Health Dept., and don’t want to take any chances with fouling this up.
My question: How do I “sanitize” my well? As recommended by several people locally, I would pump it for a few hours, pour in a gallon or two of bleach, let it sit, and then pump it for several more hours. Is this a common practice? Any other input on this?
Thanks,
Andrew
Replies
That's pretty close to what the county health department instructed me to do twenty years ago. I had a 6000 gallon cistern. It made the water stink and my water heater rolled over and died. Good luck.
Thats pretty standard.
My health department told me to pour 2 gallons of bleach in, put the hose in the top of the well casing and run it for several hours. Then run every fixture in the house until you smell bleach at each (hot and cold) then run whatever you want (sprinklers?) until you smell no bleach anywhere.
Any chlorine in the system will fail the test automatically.
We ran sprinklers for several weeks (new lawn) and never got around to the bleach part, and we passed the test anyway.
There's an echo in here,Lee
Yup, around here you dump the bleach in, then stick a hose in the top of the casing and run it for a while, then run the house lines until you smell bleach, them flush it all.
Lee
Your well beat ours. Ours was 884'
Our old house was on a well and at the well head, we had a hose bib just for testing the water. Any time you have any length of pipe, you are asking for more of a chance of test failure. At least this is what our well tech told us. We also disconnect the the pipe at the well head at the union to help reduce the head pressure and increase the wells ability to pump more efficiently. This is also what you do when you do a flow test
What we did for the test was pour bleach down the well the day before and let it sit over night. with it disconnected from the house. (our home also had a 3000 gal storage tank and booster system) The following day, the well would be pump until there were no signs of chlorine in the system and a water sample would be taken. Make sure that the hose bib is sanitized just prior to you taking the sample this can cause a failure.
If the test needs to be done because of a sale or a refinance, then you probably are going to also need to have a flow test to be performed. In this case, then hire a well company that is certified to take the sample and send it to a certified lab. They are better experienced in these matters. The company that I used didn't charge any extra for the sample test because they were there anyway for the flow test.
This is the procedure we use for shocking a well:
Pour in the bleach. Run the taps until you can smell bleach at the tap. I mean all of them. Let sit 24 hrs. Run the taps until you cannot smell bleach any more.
In our area, the acceptable bacteria level is 0.0, so almost every well is shocked shortly before a house is listed for sale.
The general procedure has been outlined already, but here's a step-by-step reference
http://www.watersystemscouncil.org/VAiWebDocs/WSCDocs/6061823Chlorinating_Your_Well.pdf
To sanitize a well, you should achieve a concentration of 100 parts per million free chlorine with a contact time of 24 hours. Whether you use household bleach (unscented, of course) or dry chlorine, the amount you need to add depends on the amount of water in the well. More than necessary isn't really better--too much means a longer time to flush the chlorine from the system. And, if you are on a septic system, don't flush the water lines into the septic tank.
What the others have said + you have to remove the aerator at the faucet you test and you must flame the opening after you remove the areator. Chlorine and flame ,you should have no problem.
Thanks for all of the good information - our well isn't connected to anything yet, we need to do this test for the building permit, there is about 3 feet of PVC pipe outside of the casing.
Migrane - not sure "beating your well" is an honor... We drilled this well after drilling a 900' dry hole. To add insult to injury, the drillers broke off 450' of drillpipe and a bit in the first well, still down there... So far, counting the pump and 6-3uf wire going down to it, we owe the drillers somewhere between $30 and 35k. Ouch.
Again, thanks all, I'm so glad I found this message board - we are just starting to have our house built, and all of the information here is invaluable. Andrew
You say your hole is 900+ and the pump is 750. Lets say, with the pump off for a day, the water in the casing is 650,,, the static water level. To cut to the point, when you add the clorine to well, have the pump running, with the water going right back down the casing, this will chlorinate, and force into the pump the 100' of water above the pump. Glad to hear you got yourself a nice well!
Oh no, the dreaded dry well...
That "beating our well" was a tongue in cheek remark. It sure does leave a big bruise on the pocket book doesn't it? I guess it leaves a bruise in the wells guy's pocket book, too. I remember asking my guy if they ever dropped the drill head to the bottom and he looked at me and said "bad Karma, go away" Later we talked and he said that a friend of his broke about 300' of drill pipe and and the drill head. It shut his friend down for about a month while he scrounged up the money for more equipment.
Ours was drill about about 12-13 yrs ago and then it cost about $14 per ft. Don't want to know what it would cost now.
Out of curiosity, what is the GPM after a 4-6-8hr flow test?
Bleach is the proper way, but "a couple of gallons" is way too much. I worked on a job to be inspected by the department of health that was designed and overseen by a licensed engineer who designs public water works. He specified a level of chlorine of 50 ppm. Another poster said 100 ppm which is probably fine as well.
Bleach is 5.25% chlorine, so by calculating the volume of your well you can determine the amount of bleach to add to reach, say, 100 ppm. You have a very deep well, but even so, the amount will only be a few cups. You can add more to account for the pumping you will be doing, but a couple of gallons would take a long time to flush.
Remember that swimming pools are only treated to about 1 ppm.