Well Water Filtration?

/ Well Water Filtration? #1  

Beltzington

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Appling, Georgia
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The property we are building our retirement home has a 20+ year old well that sat idle for last 5 of those years. Once I got the pump wired back up the it provides about 15gpm. If I do not run the pump for a few days it pumps muddy water for about 30 seconds and then runs clear. Water was tested after shock treating it with chlorine and determined safe for consumption. The water has a clean smell and taste.

Based on these facts I was wondering what type of filtration you would recommend, obviously I do not want muddy water getting into our home water system. Passive preferred over active but filtration effectiveness would be the most important factor. I have room for settling tanks etc.

Appreciate your advice
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #2  
Just a simple inline sediment filter should work.Fairly inexpensive.You may have to change filters once a week or so for a while.Deep well or shallow?I would expect it to clear up with regular use.
 
/ Well Water Filtration?
  • Thread Starter
#3  
Well depth is unknown, the man who had it drilled had died and his wife was never involved with his "hobby" farm. When I had the cap off for the chlorine treatment I dropped a plumb bob on a string and it went down about 60', however I could not ascertain if it was at the bottom or hung up.
I am also considering installing a cistern filled by the well pump and using a separate pump off the cistern to provide higher pressure and flow rate to the house then the well pump can provide.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #4  
as mentioned, it will probably clear up with more regular use, but it can't hurt to throw on a sediment and carbon filter.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #5  
Of course the sediment will have to be cleared but I would not drink any well water without running it through a UV light. Just something I think you should consider.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #6  
I'd personally bring the water up to a pressure tank at 50-60PSI with a pressure switch running the pump. This keeps the pump from cycling on every time you fill a glass of water. After the pressure tank put an inline chlorinator, and a 100-120 gallon contact tank.

Contact tanks allow the oxidation from the chlorination to react with bacteria, iron, and any other dissolved solids which causes them to precipitate to the bottom of the tank as sediment. This should be flushed as often as once a month depending on your usage and how much sediment your well typically produces (your water goes out of the top of the tank with pressure from the pressure tank and there is a flush valve at the bottom to remove the sediment). After the contact tank, the water flow should feed into a conditioner.

This is where things can be a little tricky. I advise sending some samples to some filtration places to test for what types of mediums are recommended. I personally like a mix of various filtration mediums, and have no preference over natural or synthetic (both are used in mine). Since your well was tested as consumable, pretty much any conditioner will work to remove the chlorine. Do some research on the powerheads used on the conditioners.

All the powerhead is, is a powered valve system connected to a timer, flow meter, or both. When a certain amount of time, water usage, or a combination of the two are reached, it backwashes the filter sending everything it has collected out to a floor drain or similar (same way the contact tank is manually flushed). What powerhead setup you want will be best determined by your water usage. Fancy ones monitor your water usage and have a timer. You set how often you want it to backwash, and you set it for how many gallons you want used before it backwashes. If the time comes to backwash, but you haven't used the gallons, you can have it set it to skip 1 or 2 of the backwash cycles. Simple ones just operate on a timer (which is what I have).

You can expect anywhere from 10 to 30 years on a decent conditioner as long as you have enough chlorine going into the system to keep it bacteria free (the point of UV treatments) and are getting enough "contact time" between the chlorine and water inside the contact tank. 120 gallon contact tank is generally enough for most households, though you can't have too much contact time killing bacteria and precipitating dissolved solids, so if you can fit a larger tank or want to run multiple contact tanks in series that can be done too. Another thing to remember, everything between the chlorinator and the conditioner must be plumbed with CPVC (the yellow tinted stuff). Plain white PVC will not withstand the chlorine.

This will give you water that is the quality of the average bottled water. Cleaned of bacteria like city water, but cleaned of the chlorine used to do that task also. Most of the powerheads allow a "bypass" feature that lets you occasionally run chlorine through your household plumbing to keep it clean and bacteria free (like the internals of your toilet). UV lights tend to lose their intensity and bacteria killing power somewhat rapidly. When I put my system in and had read on the subject, the intensity of the UVs put out by UV lights near half after a year of use and the contact time between the water and the UV lights in a high consumption household isn't near enough to kill 100% of the bacteria common to well water even at 100% intensity.

If you want to take it a step farther you can go into water softeners. Water softeners can reduce your overall water usage as soaps will suds up more and you'll use less, softer waters are gentler on fabrics when washing clothes and the detergents suds up more and remove stains better, water spots on washed cars are a thing of the past. Old softeners that used salt of some sort used to end up with some extra sodium in the water, which isn't the case with newer softeners. Newer softeners only use salt to clean the filtration media during the backwash cycles and no salt ever enters your home. These systems use very little salt also.

Some people do not care to drink softened water (I am one), and for those I recommend a point of use reverse osmosis system that goes under the sinks you will be getting drinking water from. At this point you have the purest water that can be had.

If you research it all out and plan well, a system should be low maintenance and last well over 10 years before needing any repairs or replacements and when you calculate the cost of a good system out over a timespan like that, it is much cheaper than a city water bill for much better water.
 
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/ Well Water Filtration? #7  
Agree with all the above comments but its important to really give the bore and the pump a good flushing if it stands idle for too long. Run it onto the lawn or somewhere else for many hours before you run it through any filters.

You may find it needs quite a few days of running to get rid of the stagnant/stinky/muddy water thats been sitting in and around the bore for years.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #8  
Some people do not care to drink softened water (I am one), and for those I recommend a point of use reverse osmosis system that goes under the sinks you will be getting drinking water from. At this point you have the purest water that can be had.

I was advised (by the people who sell them) not to use an RO filter for water from our rainwater tank. They said the membranes will clog up with algae too quickly. They advised sticking to a multi stage cartridge filter with a UV light. So thats what I have connected to our drinking water tap and I have no complaints. Dunno if that also applies to well water.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #9  
If you're going through a complete chlorination, conditioning, and softening before the RO, it doesn't matter what the source of the water is, the membranes will last at or near the maximum they are rated for. By the time the water gets to the RO it's been cleaned of anything that will clog or grow.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #10  
The property we are building our retirement home has a 20+ year old well that sat idle for last 5 of those years.

Have you considered just using rainwater for the house? We have two 5,000 gallon tanks that keep us supplied all year and we use them for everything in the house. We only use the bore water for the garden.

The rainwater is used untreated and unfiltered for everything in the house except drinking (which goes through a multi-stage filter).

Correction... I throw a bit of chlorine in the tanks one or twice a year.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #11  
It's amazing the different approaches everyone takes.

We pump our water up and use it. Drinking, cooking, washing...
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #12  
It's amazing the different approaches everyone takes.

We pump our water up and use it. Drinking, cooking, washing...

Consider yourself blessed! Ours is flavored with sulphur and shale gas - lol.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #13  
Our well water is extremely soft, clear and loaded with shale gas. The well was drilled in 1975 which was 8 years prior to the first gas well drilling in this neck of the woods in Southeast Kentucky. Although there are several water wells in the same aquifer in this valley, our well is the only one with the shale gas. Our well is 236 feet deep. I have the pump about 10 feet off the bottom. The water level stays at approximately 125 feet. I've had a meter on the well since September 1996. We have pumped over 850,000 gallons out of it. For the last 6 months, it has been supplying two households at about 300 gallons per day usage.

We do not filter it. We do not drink it. We do use it for clothes washing, cooking, bathing and general household cleaning. We do not waste the water on the lawn, etc.

There are pros and cons about dumping chlorine down a well bore! At best, it is a temporary measure in killing bugs. Also, if the well is not pumped basically dry rather soon, there's going to be lots of smelly stuff come out ..........mainly dead rotten white algae! A few years ago, the Kentucky Rural Water Association had an article in their periodical about chlorine treatment of water wells.

We also have a 100' deep well which as some iron/magnesium in it. Although rather shallow for local averages, it can produce about 150 -175 gallons per hour day after day without stopping. We do use it to water our vegetable garden. My son has a well nearby that's 390 feet deep with the same quality of water as the well with the gas, but it's capacity is very low.

So much for wells ........... public water is available on our rural road but it's not mandatory to tap on!
 
/ Well Water Filtration?
  • Thread Starter
#14  
Appreciate everyone's comments, some very specific ideas I need to think about. I grew up on a farm with a well and no filtration, other then some minor white spotting on my teeth caused by excessive fluoride in the water I suffered no harm. That was 40 years ago and I am afraid the ground water is much more suspect. Adding chemicals to solve the problem doesn't set well with me although I am sure my county supplied water has been through the ringer.

AndyBees - So based on your post you are drinking bottled water or going thirsty?
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #15  
I grew up on well water. Straight from the ground, no filters. I now get my water from a spring, I use 2 sediment filters inline. No problems.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #16  
Adding chemicals to solve the problem doesn't set well with me although I am sure my county supplied water has been through the ringer.


Most municipal water systems are a closed loop. You pee, you poo, you pipe it to them, they clean it, and pipe it back to you again to start all over...
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #17  
Yep! We drink bottled water ........ However, we have used a filter on the counter for filtering and bottling drinking water from the well!
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #18  
I won't try to filter anything that hasn't been chlorinated. Filters can easily act as breeding grounds for all sorts of bacteria. It doesn't take much for bacteria to take hold in a filter and no amount of backwashing will knock it loose. At best it will clog the filter once the bacteria takes over; at worst it can make you deathly ill.

There are also many things that can be dissolved in the water that will pass right through a filter and the only way to separate these things from the water is to highly oxygenate the water. Doing so will cause these dissolved items to solidify so they can be filtered.

Chlorine is really the only way to get both reactions, oxygenation and antibacterial disinfection, at levels that are sufficient for a high use home. Municipal systems feed chlorine into the water before filtering and again before it leaves the treatment facility to keep the city pipes free of bacterial sludge.

UV was mentioned as an antibacterial solution, and it is to a point. While it is true UV kills bacteria, it's not an instant "zap" and it's dead. The intensity of the UV matters a lot, and all lights lose intensity with age. Last I investigated a top notch UV light in water systems have their effectiveness reduced by nearly 50% after 6 months of usage. Beyond that, UV systems generally only treat a small amount of water at a time so are most effective as a point of use solution (under the sink or at the tap delivering the water); because at the point of use you generally do not exceed a couple gallons of flow per minute and that allows the best "contact time" between the light and water. A whole house UV system really loses it's effectiveness a lot once you have several taps open and are flowing several gallons per minute.

Chlorine isn't a "zap" and it's dead solution either, but a strong solution in a 120 gallon contact tank provides plenty of contact time between the chlorine and water for the desired results in the typical high-use household.

I add 14oz of chlorine to my system every two to three weeks. My conditioning filter removes 100% of the chlorine before it enters the household plumbing. Two or three times a year I bypass the conditioning filter (turn two valves) and go around and flush all the toilets several times and turn on all the taps until I smell the chlorine and I shut everything down and leave it set over night. Next day I'll route the water back through the conditioning filter and flush all the pipes and toilets of their chlorine.

As a test, go lift the lid off the tank on the back of your toilet and look inside. Would you drink it? Whatever you see inside that tank is the same sort of stuff that is inside your pipes (everything inside that tank came out of your pipes). Feel the inside under the water level, does it feel slick or slimy? If so that is bacteria growing on the surfaces, the same stuff is growing inside your pipes and will also grow inside any filters you add...
 
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/ Well Water Filtration? #19  
Sysop, I agree with your assessment and procedures to treat and filter well water. And, I do understand the filter contamination 100% .... in a matter of days they can get pretty stinky. Several years ago, I tried the "whole" house filter and learned right off that I'd rather the water to flow in untreated.

Although we live far out in the rural in a sparsely populated area, I know contamination can move through an aquifer for miles. And, we all know installing the pump, pipe, wiring, etc., is never done ideally to eliminate contamination.

Anyway, we now only drink bottled water. But, when we were filtering (Beretta), we sourced the water from the hot water side of the faucet. Also, we have had our well tested for contamination, however that has not been done in a long time.

Yep! The commode tank is a good place to see what's going on with the water source!

Last week, we filled the grand kid's 5000 gallon above ground pool with water from the well that has lots of iron and magnesium. We are on the 2 shock and about the 6h filter. The water is beginning to look like "pool" water.
 
/ Well Water Filtration? #20  
I can make about 2400 gallons of bottled water quality water per day at a cost of about $50 a year. I'll never buy bottled water again.
 
 
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