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DuaneBoyce
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water well
01/27/06 01:08 PM
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I had a new water well dug about 2 months ago 290 feet. I finally had the pump running the other day and the water was a little dirty and had a slight smell to it . Will this go away or should I be concerened? 
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Pat
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It may go away but the only way to test is to pump a significant volume of water out of it. If after a few thousand gal and it is not clearing much, THEN BE CONCERNED. Still after pumping quite a lot of water from it, pull a sample in a sterile container and have it tested. Turbidity (cloudyness) is not neccessarily a show stopper as filters for turbidity are not all that expensive. If you need one, buy a BIG one as in the long run it will be less hassle and will be cheaper than changing little ones all the time.
Good luck,
 Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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DuaneBoyce
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
01/30/06 11:45 AM
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Thanks for the help .Where can I have the water tested and what should I be looking for?
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Pat
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Duane, Your county extension agent should be able to advise you regarding good reliable folks to do the water tests. Who is favored varies from region to region. Often it is a state or state liscensed agency. Generally you follow their instructions to take the samples yourself. There are home test kits and I am not against them but feel you want a professional rigorous test to start with and additional tests between thorough tests may be in order for DIY to monitor any specific areas of concern. What to test for? Nowadays the list is HUGE due to all the polution and potential contaminants.
The good news is that there are various filters that can remove just about anything and make the water safe. I personally like RO units (reverse osmosis) for drinking and cooking water (ice makers and fridge water dispensers have filters but... RO is better there too.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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lliefveld
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[quote.....well dug about 2 months ago....the water was a little dirty and had a slight smell to it . Will this go away or should I be concerened?
We had a hard-rock well dug in August. It was absolutely wonderful having our own water, but I was appalled at the cloudiness and it tasted... well, sort of 'oily'. But this is only a temporary condition. The cloudiness was due to the granite 'dust' that hadn't flushed out yet, and it went away first. The funny taste took about a month and a half to 2 months to go away (we only used the water on weekends when we camped). According to the well diggers, it's due to the new pipes and the harmless pipe compound.
Now, it's absolutely the sweetest water I've ever tasted!
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CJDave
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 When I was in the deep well pump business, we had a yard full of big 8", 10", and 12" pump column pipe with the ends open and who-knows-what-sort of critters running through it; not to mention wind-blown dust and dirt. We would load it onto a trailer, hook onto it with big clamps and slap lots of home-made pipe thread "dope" on each thread after washing the threads with solvent. We handled it with greasy gloves and spun it into the threaded couplings with a grease and dirt impregnated 1-1/2" manila rope. When we got all the pipe "in the hole" we added the pump head and used plenty of "dope" on every fitting and every bolt. Landowners who would NOT THINK of drinking from a dirty water glass couldn't WAIT to get a drink of that water with whatever was handy....sometimes their own dirty hands...as soon as we got the engine started and the water poured out of that big discharge pipe. Go figure! 
CJDave
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Pat
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lliefveld, Did you have the water tested. How about for arsenic? Some arsenic compounds taste really sweet.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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CJDave
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
02/25/06 05:32 AM
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Well, yeah, it IS poison, but doesn't arsenic give you nice rosy cheeks? Isn't that worth SOMETHING. 
CJDave
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turnkey4099
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Re: water well
[re: CJDave]
02/25/06 11:39 AM
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ISTM that arsenic is a natually occuring item in wells in some parts of the country - in very minute quantities of course. Somewhere I saw that you could get more arsenic from the well water than by chewing on the treated lumber in school play yards.
Harry K
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egon
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The well water will reflect the mineral composition of the resevoir or surface contaminates that can be fed into the resevoir.
In one place in Texas there is Lithium in the well water. It's presence has beneficial medical overtones.
In some places sweet water is considered water that is not alkaline.
Egon 
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Pat
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Re: water well
[re: egon]
02/25/06 11:09 PM
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Egon, On our two failed expeditions into the Chocolate Mountains to rediscover the Lost Dutchman's Mine we were very cautious about our water sources as some of the water there is high in arsenic. We were using a couple different types of water purifiation tablets which killed biologics but did not remove any minerals. Halezone and Iodine were the "standard" fare then. Now we have a pump equipped with a microbiologic filter that we cary in our camper for just in case. What the world needs is a back pack sized RO unit.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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egon
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
02/26/06 04:51 AM
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We have a "Pur" portable filter in the freezer. Think it goes down to 2 microns and has iodine in the filter.
Uhh - I've got a an old map inherited from my grandfather who, when young, traded a windbroke mustang to a footsore old prospector for the Original map to the "Lost Dutchman Mine". Unfortunetly he moved north and with a new family was never able to check it out. I've never had a chance either. It's up for bids ehh !!!
Egon
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Pat
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Re: water well
[re: egon]
02/27/06 03:34 PM
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Egon, A filter size of 2 microns won't touch arsenic.
Yesterday I visited a friend in Norman OK (Home of OU) and he told me several of the wells supplying water to Norman are contaminated with arsenic. The city mixes it with less contaminated water to bring the concentration down to within Federal guidelines. Glad I don't have water from their water department.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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CJDave
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
02/27/06 10:37 PM
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Pat,....here is the way that those guys over in Norman are looking at their little problem:
"The SOLUTION.......to POLLUTION........ is DILUTION".
CJDave
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DuaneBoyce
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
03/10/06 11:50 AM
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my water test were 2ppm iron, ph 6.5, hardness 8 gr per gal.
would a simple water softner(like the ones at lowes) fix these problems or not?
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Pat
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Duane, Just about any residential water softener will handle the hardness. These units typically exchange sodium for the calcium in the water. The water is soft (reacts well with soaps and detergents without making excess curd) but has a lot of sodium and is not the best thing to drink and cook with. Some gardeners and flower folk won't even water plants with it.
If you plumb your faucets for drinking (and ice makers) to the hard water you avoid that problem. The hard water is better medically than the sodium rich softened water. You can use alternative chemicals in place of salt in the regular softener and avoid the sodium problem but at a bit more expense and slightly less ease of availability. You can use a RO (Reverse Osmosis) filter for your drinking, cooking and ice maker water. It will work before or after the water softener and will produce water as good or better than most commercially available botled water. Some folks quibble about the water wasted by the RO unit. You can run the discharge from the RO unit outside so it waters something or fills an architectural water feature or bird bath or... ITs discharge isn't poison it just contains whatever the unit is removing from your water. It will have a higher concentratioin of whatever is in the water fed into it.
I'm not sure about the EPA recommendatiions for PPM of iron. Water softeners with no accessories added DO NOT remove iron. I'm not sure if your iron is high enough to warrant treatment. Check it out with a few googles to find out the EPA recommendations. There are units for treating iron available to the DIY guy if your levels are judged to be too high. If your pH is a problem after treatment, that too can be adjusted with manual or automatic equipment. They add a safe basic chemical to neutralize acidity which YOU DO NOT WANT as acids disolve metals such as those your faucets and some other plumbing may be made of. Softening should help control any pH imballance on the basic side of neutral as it removes the calcium.
Oh, by the way, if yo ask around I'm sure you will find several folks who have drunk softened water for years with no known side effects (at least that they are aware of but how would they know if they lowered their kids IQ by 20 points or cut 10-20 years off their life span?)
Arsenic in wells (in rather small concentrations) has of late been the subject of some scientific enquiry. Researchers gave cognitive tests to children drinking the arsenic contaminated water and compared their scores to children of equivalent socioeconomic background drinking better water. Those drinking the arsenic contaminated water were by comparison, retarded.
There are folks who walk across the street without checking for traffic and make it OK but that doesn't make it a recommendable behavior. Likewise folks drinking contaminated water and claiming no ill effect may be blissfully ignorant of the long term deleterioius effects. Oh, and acceptable arsenic levels are being RETHOUGHT.
As regards all the extra sodium in softened water... I don't think drinking it and hoping for the best is a sound strategy no matter how many folks you find that have done it. If you opt for a softener, consider using the alternative chemistry and or not drinking the soft water or both.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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GaryQWA
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
03/11/06 01:15 PM
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The formula to find the amount of added sodium by ion exchange water hardness removal (a water softener) is 7.85 mg/l per grain per gallon of exchange. I.E. 15 gpg hardness * 7.85 mg/l, roughly a quart of water, = 117.75 mg of added sodium.
BTW, all waters contain a varying amount of sodium. And that can be proven by reading an annual city water CCR (consumer confidence report) or going to the water quality section of their web site. You can also check the labels on any bottled water for sodium content per serving.
All water softeners (ion exchange) remove ferrous (soluble, clear water) iron, but, a big box store brand softener will not do so very long without problems. Check the maximum iron that the softener you are thinking of buying to see how much iron it can remove; or ask the dealer. Most big box stores have a 1-2 ppm of iron limit. Most water treatment dealers' softeners will remove up to 3 ppm and any of them can be built to remove up to 5 ppm. A few will claim up to 10 ppm of iron but they usually fail within a few years.
The EPA has a suggested MCL (maximum contaminate level) of .3 ppm for ferrous iron. And as little as .03 ppm of iron is sufficient to cause rust stains on surfaces wherever the water stands or evaporates on.
With 2 ppm of iron in the above water test results, times 4 to convert to gpg, = 8 plus the hardness of 8 gpg = 16 gpg compensated hardness. With acid neutralizing using sacrificial mineral, added hardness of roughly 4 gpg = 16 gpg for added sodium of 125.6 mg/l.
A slice of white bread normally has150 mg of sodium. An 8 oz glass of V8 juice has 560 mg. An 8 oz glass of skim milk has 530 mg of sodium. I could go on but... IMO only those folks on a sodium restricted diet need be concerned. Here is a link to show sodium content in other common foods/beverages:
http://www.awqinc.com/sodium_softening.html
No one should use the reject water of a RO system. Especially without knowing what and how much of it the RO is removing/reducing from the water it is treating.
Using salt substitute, potassium chloride, instead of softener salt, sodium chloride will require an increased salt dose in the majority of softeners. That can be as much as 30% more and is determined by the salt efficiency of the salt dose in the given volume and type of resin used in the softener.
Arsenic is a serious health problem for people of all ages. As are many other things found in water. And if it's there, the water treatment industry has equipment to remove or reduce it on either a POE (point of entry) or POU (point of use) basis.
Duane, I suggest a correctly sized softener using a Clack WS-1 control valve.
Gary Slusser
Gary Slusser
Quality Water Associates
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Pat
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Re: water well
[re: GaryQWA]
03/11/06 08:24 PM
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Great info Gary, Thanks. My wife and I drink the low sodium V-8. Oh, by the way, there is considerable variation in the range of medical opinions regarding the adviseability of various sodium levels in the diet. I tend to try to err on the low side of what the average person does (which in my thoughts is to get way too much) but I'm not on a crusade for super low sodium for everyone. For those of us who do try to reasonably restrict sodium intake AND drink a significant amount of water (now being discredited as a health boost) would be adding significant extra unneeded unwanted sodium.
As a purely personal taste issue, I have of course had softened water to drink and NEVER liked the taste but am sure there are folks who think it is ambrosia.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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GaryQWA
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
03/12/06 12:34 AM
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Pat that's great. My concern was/is that those folks reading your comments about "significant extra unneeded unwanted sodium" may not be as far above average as you are. I also thought they might appreciate the formula to do their own calculation of the actual amount of sodium that is added. I was not attempting to change your mind in the slightest.
Gary Slusser
Gary Slusser
Quality Water Associates
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Pat
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Re: water well
[re: GaryQWA]
03/12/06 08:10 PM
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Gary, I never thought you were doing anything but delivering the facts. And good stuff it was. In a contest of facts versus opinions... Facts win. Of course there are always interpretations of facts that seem to change over time like fashions.
I have been reading lately about the "drinking lots of water for your health" advise that has been so popular to talk about but usually not actually performed by many. It seems that proper hydration in ordinary circumstances does not require near the quantities touted. Even medical science can have a change of mind.
When I had a softener, I plumbed the house to only soften the hot water and the water going to the laundry and bathroom. It was a crawl space house so access to the pipes was trivial and since it was only about 800 sq ft I didn't have to crawl all that far. I installed a RO unint in the kitchen.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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lliefveld
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
03/21/06 01:55 PM
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In reply to:
Did you have the water tested. How about for arsenic? Some arsenic compounds taste really sweet.
I guess I should have clarified. It's 'sweet', meaning no taste of chlorine or other chemicals that I"m used to in our city water here in So. Cal. It tastes pure and clear and refreshing.
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Pat
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lliefveld, I have tasted water that was as you describe, pure, clear, and refreshing with no "off" flavor notes, no odd smells or any aftertaste. It tested poorly and was marginally safe for human consumption.
My current well water tastes as good as water can taste and tests quite safe but to be on the safe side you need to retest every year. Living in an old oil field from when practices were much less environmentaly friendly than they are now we never know when a well may go brackish or have any of a number of polution problems. Nitrates are also a problem and can result from various agricultural activities.
Water is just too important to take for granted. I can recall in my youthful ignorance drinking directly from streams when back packing high in the mountains were there was very little human presence only to round a bend and find a dead cow in the stream about 100 ft from my last refreshing drink. I have also had water scooped from concavities in the rocks. We strained out the things we could see swiming around in it, added Halezone and Iodine and then used Wyler's fruit drink mix to camoflage the taste. Nothing quite like Wylers to cover the taste of water purificatioin tablets. Of course nowdays I have a pump with a filter that produces Sparklets quality water.
Don't take purity for granted and know that clarity and taste, as important as they are, do not adequately substitute for proper analysis.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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lliefveld
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Re: water well
[re: Pat]
03/29/06 05:03 PM
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Good points, Pat.
I don't think it's been tested yet, but that's definitely on our list, and I'm sure it's probably required before we get our final inspection on our house.
Everyone around here has hard rock wells, and they've all tested just fine in our area. The only problems that people have encountered have been in a different area of town, and it's been primarily sulphur.
There's no agriculture 'upstream' from us... unless you count the marijuana farms that people sneak into the National Park, so we don't have to worry about pesticides sinking into the ground.
I have to laugh at your description of drinking from 'pure clear' streams, only to find a dead cow upstream. Here in Southern California you can't drink from a stream without getting guardia. In Canada, when I went on a 6-day trail ride, we drank from the stream all the time, and the guide made coffee and lemonade with water from the stream. I'll tell you, it made me pretty nervous.
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turnkey4099
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Quote: I have to laugh at your description of drinking from 'pure clear' streams, only to find a dead cow upstream. Here in Southern California you can't drink from a stream without getting guardia. In Canada, when I went on a 6-day trail ride, we drank from the stream all the time, and the guide made coffee and lemonade with water from the stream. I'll tell you, it made me pretty nervous.
End quote
I used to water from the small creek running by the place. We are right on the highway. One day while I was at work, my wife watched some young guys pull in with a steaming engine, disconnect the sprinkler, fill their radiator, one took a big drink and just tossed the running hose on the ground. I wondered later how far they made it as that stream runs through a barnyard just 1/4 mile up the road.
Harry K
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Pat
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lliefveld, Make sure your minimum requirements are met irrespective of whatever is levied on you by Government as you're drinking it, they aren't. If that means you have to take some time to become informed on the topic then that is the cost of personal responsibility in place of depending on government to do your thinking for you. I don't ignore Governmental standards but I don't blindly accept them either as there is a history of their being wrong at times.
Our drinking without treating was above 6000 ft in Baja California Norte near Picacho Diablo (over 14000 ft and highest spot in Baja.) The cow was at a lower elevation, on the way up. That taught us a valuable lesson and we waited till we were a bit higher near the headwaters of the streams before dipping our "Sierra" cups.
Cowboy coffee is traditionally boiled and isn't so dangerous but lemonade sounds like it wouldn't do much purifying. We used Wyler's lemonade mix to help kill the taste of Halezone and Iodine when we used purification tablets in obviously biologically active water.
Then when you think you are safe... there are other ways besides dead cows to endanger you. We are on rural water. One of the GOOD OLE BOYS operating the system didn't do too good and we received a mailing listing various symptoms we might have experienced when the water was insufficiently treated (various gastrointestinal upsets.) This along with a notice that the employee was being sent to school on the system operation. Luckily we were drinking our well water at the time and missed out of the "fun." We are drinking rural water now but using our own filtration system on it.
Annual water testing is a simple and innexpensive insurance policy. A lot of well water that used to be safe isn't now. There has to be a first time for the quality reduction. It is often a slow change that would not be noticed early without testing.
It has been said that the difference between the third world and us is that there you can't drink the water and here you can't breathe the air. A gross oversimplification. There are places in Texas where decades of laundry detergent have penetrated the aquafer and you get a "head" of foam on a glass of tap water.
With luck your "hard rock" water will be clean and pure for as long as ou use it. Remember, water wasn't greated at great depths. The aquafer is recharged from surface sources.
Pat
"I'm not from your planet, monkey boy!"
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