Bacteria….Now What?
When it comes to Wells, and real estate transfers many water sample results show bacteria in the water. This is often a scary thing for home owners and those who do not know much about wells. Thankfully there is an easy way to rid the water of bacteria.
Chlorination is a process every local well company should be familiar with.
It’s a relatively painless and inexpensive procedure (when you take into consideration the sale of a house, or digging a new well. Chlorination roughly runs around $500.00 depending on your well company. The service technician will drop in several (calculated to how deep the well is) chlorine tablets. This will circulate through the well along with through the faucets. Before they leave all techs should chlorinate all water fixtures (including toilets) to remove all contamination. The price indicated includes the retest for bacteria after the procedure is complete and up to 4 hours of labor to have the technician flush the chlorine throught the entire facility/ house . This high concentration of chlorine must be purged through every point of entry/ exit the water goes through hot and cold water. Once the high concentration is fully saturating the residence and well it then sits for 24/48 contact hours to thoroughly break up the build up in the sytem. Bleach/ Chlorine is inexpensive but counting the man hours, Chlorine test strips (about 2 bottles per treatment) and labratory fee's to retest. All in all it's not so bad of a deal.
Please remember~ DO NOT DRINK OR USE WATER DURING THIS PHASE~
After 24 hours you should begin to flush your well. Run a hose outside or several faucets running to remove the chlorine. (You may higher the company to do this but it gets pretty expensive and unnecessary). After the chlorine has been flushed from the system the company will take a sample of your water and take it to an independent laboratory. Please note that during the flush of the system its common for debri to plug the screens of faucets and also come through the fixtrues themselves not to worry thats just what has built up in the pipes allowing the bacteria to breed flushing out.
It takes about 3-7 days to get results back from the laboratory but if the process was done correctly your well water should be free of all bacteria! Now you may ask how the bacteria got their to begin with that question does not have one answer. Changing any fixture in the plumbing of the house or well can cause a bacteria outbreak. HAving a non water tight well cap is also a common culprit. The final reason could be that surface water from flooding or a breach in the casing is infiltrating the ground water supply which can be a lot harder to treat but not impossible. When Bacteria is reaccuring then A UV Filtration system would be considered.
as seen on Active Rain...
