I'm excited about a well water system being installed in Upper Ojai, a beautiful area between Ojai and Santa Paula in Ventura County, California. The owner has dealt with water that smells like rotten eggs and causes black stains ever since she purchased the home. Not hard to figure out that the rotten egg smell was hydrogen sulfide; the home is very close to the hot springs in that area. The black stains turned out to be manganese. The owner was actually taking her laundry to a friend's house rather than risk stains - that's how bad it has been...
ECOsmarte does a particularly excellent job with well water, and will handle both the hydrogen sulfide as well as the manganese with no problem. No more rotten egg smell. No more black stains. Not to mention no hard water scaling. And we will accomplish all that while leaving the healthy minerals in the water. We do a 140 point water test first to make sure we know exactly what is in the water, then we custom build the system. Of course I told her all that, and after a lot of research of other systems, she chose ECOsmarte.
We just started the installation yesterday. We were unable to finish due to the need for a 110 electrical in the shed that houses the equipment; only 220 was available. I say "we" here - I just watched, asked questions about the plumbing and answered a few questions about the ECOsmarte system. This is the first well system they have installed for me; previous installations were pools. I am fortunate to have excellent installers who know plumbing like the back of their hand and do excellent, clean and efficient work.
The owner is quite excited at the prospect of clean, pure, odorless water - something she has never experienced in this house. I am practically as excited as she is - what a blessing for homeowners with well water that needs help!
I'll let you know how it goes.
Comments (3)
Well....the fine tuning of the well system is still happening. After installation there was an immediate decrease in hydrogen sulfide odor, but a bit of odor still lingered, and was worse when the water had sat in the pipes for a while.
Here's what I learned: I knew that the copper ions in the water cause a
de-scaling of existing minerals inside the pipes. What I didn't know was that small bubbles or blisters of hydrogen sulfide odor are trapped in the hard water scale, so when it comes off, the scent returns. Until the de-scaling is complete - 2-3 months - the odor will come and go. Certainly less odor than before, but not yet odorless, unless we ran the water for a while so it had not been sitting in the pipes.
Another interesting turn of events...there is iron bacteria that live in the water. There is a balance between everything in the water, and by oxidizing the manganese, we unfortunately made more room for the iron bacteria. So now the copper kills the bacteria, and like every organism when they die, expels its waste - which is iron. So we started to get iron deposits in the backs of the toilet tanks, where the water sits.
The way to remedy both the bacteria and the odor bubbles is to shock the well with chlorine. Bummer, you out there might say. And so might I if the situation was a well with fairly pure water to start with. After getting a good look at the holding tank for the untreated water, I am frankly amazed that the water can ever be drinkable. Straight from the ground it reeks of Hydrogen Sulfide (rotten eggs) and stains things black from the manganese. This well is situated close to a hot springs, and therein lies the problem.
So with wells like this, periodic (twice yearly) chlorine treatment is necessary. The iron bacteria is killed before it goes through the system, so iron deposits don't happen in the house. The chlorine also solves the bubbles of trapped gas problem, effectively stripping the scale off. I know there must be some of you out there who are chuckling because I have, thus far, been so down on chlorine, and here I am saying this situation needs it. But it's a periodic well treatment, a pre-treatment of the water, and the chlorine is certainly not intended to be consumed; the ECOsmarte system will definitely remove any residual chlorine.
The chlorine shock seems like a logical solution...if only we had enough water to do it. The well is reaching the lowest point of the year of the water table, and would have a hard time with the flushing out part of the chlorine treatment. We will probably by-pass the ECOsmarte system for a 3-4 days and do a gradual chlorine treatment instead of all in one day. The bypass is important because chlorine does not mix with one part of the filtration media, and will cause it to solidify. Leaving the chlorine in the well and pipes longer won't hurt anything, and will give the well a chance to recover in between flushes.
Flushing out the holding tank as well as the hot water heater is also essential, as buildup has occurred that needs to be eliminated for the system to get a fresh start, and to eliminate the odor bubbles there, too.
This is probably the most complicated well system I will ever handle, and it came along so early in my ECOsmarte career! I am learning a LOT, and I find it all so fascinating. Again, I'll let you know how it goes.
Posted by Wendy Stroud | October 3, 2007 12:59 AM
Well, finally the water table is up high enough to chlorinate the well to wipe out the iron bacteria, strip the smelly bubbles and scale from the pipes.
A decision was made by the owner to wait until the water table was high enough to do a proper chlorination of the well instead of a gradual one like I thought we might try. I think that was an excellent decision, considering the water was the worst it's ever been because the water table was so low. Talk about a test of a new system!
Once the chlorination takes place, the fine tuning of the system will begin, checking for fouled media, sediment accumulation, flushing out water heaters and storage tanks, basically cleaning out everything after 5 months of really bad water.
I'll keep you informed...
Posted by Wendy Stroud | March 22, 2008 2:47 AM
Forgot to come back and update you - we did a well chlorination (carefully) and 90 - 95% of the odor and iron are now gone. Yay! If any of you out there are experiencing the same problem described here - please call ECOsmarte corporate before chlorinating your well - it's important to do it right, or the iron precipitated out can freeze up your well pump. Also, only chlorine at a certain level should be run through your filtration tanks - if you overdo it, the filtration media will solidify and become worthless.
Tough application - and ECOsmarte came through with flying colors.
Posted by Wendy | September 11, 2008 9:07 PM