Opinions on treating well water

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dave0h20

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My house is currently on municipal water, and I am contemplating switching over to well. One of my biggest deciding factors is if switching to well will be financially worth it, and if I will be satisfied with my well water which I know will need some kind of conditioning. Last year I spent approximately $600 on municipal water. The rates go up regularly, so this annual cost will continue to grow. On average, I use around 3500 gallons of water per month. Now here is some info on my well:

180' deep well, currently operating as a shallow well hookup (I have a high water table)
1.5hp MacDonald shallow well pump
Flow rate is around 29/gal per minute...yes I know thats really high and more water than I will ever need
ph 7.6
iron 0.3 (not sure what type of iron or if there is iron bacteria. I get rust stains and the water has a yellow tinge to it)
manganese unknown at this time
TDS 200
General Hardness 214.8
Carbonate Hardness 196.9
phosphates: 0
nitrates: 0
nitrites: 0

My biggest problems with my well water are a rotten egg smell which is mild to moderate compared to some well water i've smelled. Also rust staining on my sidewalks and around hose bibs (currently use the well for irrigation only.) I know the hardness would definitely need to be addressed if I were to switch my house to well water. I've looked at several iron filter backwashing systems that claim to have very low annual operating costs. I know I will also need a softening system and I'm not sure what annual operating cost will be on that. One other factor that I have thought about is electricity cost for operating the pump. I don't think it will be very high, and I also have a 1.0 hp goulds shallow well pump I could put on since the 1.5hp Macdonald is producing more water than I could ever dream of. A finally, a major reason why I would like to switch over to well water is because I absolutely despise the water authority and would almost rather invest in a good system and provide my household its own water than buy it from them. Thank you for reading and I really appreciate any thoughts on cost effectiveness of switching to well and treating it. Also any suggestions on systems that might work well for my situation. One last thing...any suggestions on any labs that do good comprehensive testing on well water. Thank you
 

ditttohead

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$600 annually.

Consider this.

If you operate your own well, it is highly recommended though not mandatory that you have the water tested annually. Cost $200. Most well owners don't do this, but no less than every 3-5 years would be the longest I would ever consider acceptable. (And yes I know, many of you have never had your well water professionally tested... lol)

Electrical cost to operate the well pump. This depends on your local rates. It has been years since I did a cost per gallon on a well system, but in general, it is not that cheap. It is not expensive either and many factors need to be considered. Well depth, pump design etc...

Water treatment cost and maintenance. For good quality equipment you will be spending some money.

Many locals charge a fee wether you are hooked up to the municipal supply or not, similar to the old phone taxes so you may still have somecost involved.

Many municipalities will add a meter to you well and charge you since you are using a shared resource.

Try to work up some math on this and see if it is worth it.

Personally, since you are already using it for irrigation, then it should be fairly easy to treat for your house, it may save you a small amount of cost.
 

Reach4

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You want to sanitize your well and plumbing system for house use, and maybe even for irrigation. Killing off IRB and SRB may last for a while I suspect and may help for non-house use. I don't know. If you decide to sanitize, you can drop chlorine pellets made for the purpose to the bottom if you have a path. I think there would also be acid pellets that can drop to the bottom also. Otherwise you would want a really large flooding volume to get the chlorine and acid well distributed I think.
https://terrylove.com/forums/index....izing-extra-attention-to-4-inch-casing.65845/ is my write-up for common deep wells where you are using liquid bleach and vinegar, and the pump is near the bottom. It may help you develop a system.

If your smell is more in the hot water, try cranking up the temperature of the hot water if you don't have people subject to scalding. Also consider a powered anode. Many remove the anode on a WH if smell is being generated. I don't like that solution, because a good working anode extends the WH life.

I like kit 90 http://www.karlabs.com/watertestkit/ which gives a lot for the bucks, and gives results in about 2 weeks including 2 trips in the mail.

For easy rough math estimates, figure you will draw about 1 KW for each rated HP. A submersible pump will take roughly half of the HP as would a jet pump, based on impressions I have picked up. I expect the extra electricity needed for the house water over and above irrigation would be less than a $1 per month per person.
 

dave0h20

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I have a jet pump so probably the easiest way to go would be some sort of chemical injection system. From the parameters I have provided, does it sound like a chemical injection system followed by a KL system would at least take care of my iron/odors?
 

ditttohead

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Very likely. A simple h2o2 injection system and KL tends to work very well for h2s, iron and manganese. KL has really proven itself to be the premier media for this application.
 
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