Well Water Treatment Costs

orb · Aug 11, 2004

You can buy test kits from LaMotte company, the same ones Culligan and Kinetco use when they come out to sell their water treatment equipment.

Lamotte

You can also send them water samples and they will give you their tests results for free.

Phred · Aug 12, 2004

Already a lot of good advice here but I will just add to what the others have said......

The chlorinator will stop the sulfur smell by oxidizing the sulfur. This will work provided you do not have a large amouint of sulfur. A test can be had for a few dollars; you collect a sample and send it off with a check and they email or snail mail you the results. This will tell you exactly how much sulfur, rotten egg smell, you actuall have.

The green sand filter does the same thing the Cl does. It will oxidize the sulfur and reduce or remove the bad smell.

You may not need both.

I have a unit that sits on top of my well and drops CL pellets down into the well when the pump comes on. Cost about 1K and I installed it myself in one afternoon.

I also have a flushable filter. The tall units that look like a welding gas tank, with a timmer on top. These work great and catch most of the large particles. They also last a very long time since the timer automtically cleans the media every few days. These should be good for a few years of service.

I do not have a softener because 1) I do not want the salt in the water. These units basically swap salt for impurties and so you end up with some small amount of salt in your water. 2) I hate the slick feel that the water is left with.

Some of the worst water I have ever seen was when I worked in Atlanta on a laser system that used city water and lots of it to cool the laser. I had to keep swapping out the filter and man was it nasty.... /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

Fred

Phred · Aug 12, 2004

( Sodium Hypochlorite is a known carcinogenic )

Daryl,

Normally I defer to your wisdom... especially when it comes to hay /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

But in this case I take exception to this statement. If you dose the well right and keep the CL level correct virtually all of it will react and very little will be left behind.

I did an interesting test. I used the CL test strips to measure the well water I have and a friends city water. Guess what, the city water was off the charts in CL content. So far it has not hurt anyone.

People also get very caught up in a few ppb of this and a few ppb of that...... oh my god were all going to die.....

The truth is we are all far more likely to die from heart attacks brought on by needless worrying about this stuff.

Don't get me wrong small quantities of some things can be a problem, but every city uses CL and most house wives have a big gallon jug of Sodium Hypochlorite with in arms reach of the washer.

After all water can be toxic itself in sufficient quantities.

Fred

MicroPilot · Aug 12, 2004

Ion exchange water softeners don't add salt (Sodium Chloride - NaCl) to the water. The salt is used as a source of sodium (Na) to regenerate the resin bed. When the water flows through the resin bed the sodium ions are exchanged for the calcium and magnesium ions that make the water hard. An alternative substance that can be used in ion exchange water softeners is Potassium Chloride (KCl) for people that may have medical reasons for a reduced sodium diet. The amount of sodium in a glass of water is comparable to the amount that is in 2 slices of white bread.

5030 · Aug 12, 2004

Phred:

You are right. If we protected ourselves from everything supposed to be cancer causing or disease producing or caused impotence or whatever, we might as well all crawl in a hole and die.

I remember in school us kids beat on the pipe coverings that encased the steam pipes to the radiators. We got a charge out of the "snow" it made. It was asbestos of course. We got covered in the stuff. I'm still here, at 54. Still smoke too, but gave the booze up.

I am going to do a post this weekend on "making hay". John Day came over to the farm with his TC and gave us a hand. Will be some interesting pictures. I'll title it-"Making Hay with John Day". I like the ring to it.

WVBill · Aug 12, 2004

Andy,

I currently have my softener discharge running into my septic and would rather use a solution similar to yours but how do you keep the 1/2" pipe from freezing up in the winter?

AndyM · Aug 12, 2004

I currently have my softener discharge running into my septic and would rather use a solution similar to yours but how do you keep the 1/2" pipe from freezing up in the winter? 

Salt water has a much lower freezing point...
I did a search to find specific numbers and found that a 10 percent salt solution freezes at 20 degrees F and a 20 percent salt solution freezes at 2 degrees F.

It's gotten colder than that, but I've never had a problem with it freezing. I suppose it could be because the water doesn't "sit" in the pipe long enough to freeze, but is under enough pressure to make it to the other end without freezing?

MicroPilot · Aug 12, 2004

( I've got my water softener discharge running into 1/2 inch plastic pipe to the ditch that runs along the road in front of my house. ... )

I wasn't allowed to do this!! I asked our health inspector, and they said absolutely not!!

AndyM · Aug 12, 2004

( I've got my water softener discharge running into 1/2 inch plastic pipe to the ditch that runs along the road in front of my house. ... ) 

 I wasn't allowed to do this!! I asked our health inspector, and they said absolutely not!! 

Ask your health inspector where he wants it to discharge. Ours said under no circumstances was the softener discharge to empty into the septic system, so I chose the next option.

Other than collecting it into a bucket and removing the salt from the water, I don't know of any other ideas if you can't discharge it to the septic system OR to the road ditch!

I say run it to the road ditch and don't tell him. It will do less harm there than running it into your $8500 septic system! /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif

SPIKER · Aug 12, 2004

( You need to run spell check too. Your command of the English language is "rotten" too. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Hint: It's the little bar right next to the "post" bar. )

While it's true my spelling is bad the REAL PROBLEM is I can't TYPE /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif !!! lol as for the Spell check, ya it's there, same for Right Click for me as I have a small program set to work there in ANY application, but that does not mean that IT knows what I was attempting to TYPE... I also think most of us here are not too worried that a word MAY or MIGHT be spelled wrong... its' more fun to think that maybe the word was spelled CORRECTLY but the teachers taught everyone else the WORNG way to spell it! /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif one thing Einstein, edison and other genius people have in common was not being able to spell grammatically correctly but spelled thing phonetically! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

Mark M /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

BTW: This was in FUN and I do know I miss spell stuff but I'm not that annal about it I did run SPELL CHECK just so you could under stand what I was typing! /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif