20+ PPM Sulfur - Suggestions?

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S Fields

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I had posted earlier this year about sulfur problems with a recently drilled well. We are now without water due to the sulfur contamination and desperately looking for help / advice.

Here's what we've done:

July 2011 - New home, city water not available, well drilled, ran for 3 days out of a water hose. Sulfur smell strong.
August 2011 - Water tested at 10+ ppm sulfur.
January 2012 - After saving for months and building a small climate controlled addition to our new home, a peroxide injection, carbon filter, softener system was installed. Sulfur PPM less than 0.5. Day 3 sulfur smell returns, Day 4 water is grey and sulfur is at 6 PPM.

After doing some research, we found out the pressure tank was in the wrong order:

Well - Peroxide Inj - Carbon - Softener - Pressure Tank - House

We switched the pressure tank to after the peroxide injection point. Added new carbon and after 3 - 4 days had the same results as before. I made sure it was injecting peroxide and had the pump on 5. It was backwashing every 24 hours. I backwashed the system 4 times in one day with the peroxide pump maxed out at 10. The best I could get was 4 PPM sulfur at the tap.

I tested it at the well and it was maxed out on my test kit, which goes to 20 ppm.

Any suggestions? Is 20+ PPM just too much to filter out? I'm out of cash and out of ideas... Any advice is greatly appreciated!
 

Tom Sawyer

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I have not used peroxide injection for suplher removal. I'm not sayining it won't work, only that I have no experience with that method. Usually we go with either green sand or terminox. Green sand will handle larger concentrations than terminox. Clorene injection can also be quite effective.
 

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Thanks for your response. The company I purchased the peroxide injection / catalyst carbon system from said it didn't need a retention tank that the peroxide would oxidize the sulfur immediately. Im starting to wonder if it needs more time? I had a bad experience with chlorine pellets.. (opened a container of pool pellets that had gotten wet and been sitting all winter long. The fumes hit my nose and I couldn't breathe, nearly passed out, my nasal passages were irritated for 2 weeks after that) That was one of the main reasons of going to peroxide.
 

Texas Wellman

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20+ ppm is a lot of sulfur. I have dealt with some at 1 ppm that would run you out of the house.

I have seen some open tank systems that used an air compressor to fill with from the well (jet the water from the well to the large tank). This dissipates much of the H2S before it even gets to your pressure tank. Then you fill a small pressure tank with a small jet or submersible pump to go to your house. Whether or not it needs to be treated before it gets to your house is something I don't know.
 

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We shut it off to the house because the smell would make you sick. I dont know how people can stand having sulfur water!

Im torn between spending more money on trying to remove the sulfur or trying to pull water from a spring thats about 200 ft from the house. We found it down in the edge of the woods about 2 weeks after we had the well drilled (my luck lol). There's a vertical casing down in it without a lid. There was a house on this land that burnt back in the 1980's, we never could find where they were getting their water, were thinking this was probably the source. The casing sticks up approx 2 ft above ground, and the water level is right at ground level. I dug debris out of it to about 4 ft (below ground level) before i hit what appears to be a rock bed. I then pulled close to 100 gallons out with a 5 gallon bucket and it filled back up within 30 minutes, so its being fed from the bottom.

Would you guys recommend getting this water tested and going this route? Is there a pump that would pull the water horizontally 200 ft into the house, or would a shallow well pump be needed at the source? The reason I ask, the sulfur well is about 150 ft from the spring, if I could wire in a pump using the existing wire ran to the well, it would save quiet a bit of money.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
 
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Tom Sawyer

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I would never recommend pulling water from a ground water source. Your well will either have to be continually monitored for bacteria or you will wind up spending way more money to insure its water quality.
 

S Fields

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Even with it going through our peroxide / carbon filtration system you wouldnt recommend the spring? We wasnt planning on using it for cooking or drinking (or the well either for that matter). Im between a rock and hard place sounds like! City water is 1/2 mile up the road and $10,000 to run it to our driveway.
 
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