Stinky water

[Tiempo]

Our water always has a least a little bit of sulfur smell, but the last week it's become really strong.

What might cause that?

[Cabin Fever]

Hot or cold or both?

Chances are you have a build up of sulfur bacteria and need to disinfect your well and plumbing system with bleach.

[Tiempo]

Both, I think.

I've also noticed that the water is tarnishing my silver brown since the smell started.

[Cabin Fever]

Step-by-step procedure for disinfecting a well

[Tiempo]

Thanks CF

[Sara in IN]

As Cabin Fever said, "Bleach." It's bacteria in the water table that dump out a sulfur compound as a byproduct.

We're on a well in a midwestern river valley, where sulfur water is endemic. Our well needs bleach at least yearly or the showers become "mineral spas" and that's with using a water softener. A couple of gallons of plain Clorox poured down the uncapped well, rinse the casing, recap well,run water till bleach smell at all faucets, don't run water for 24 hours, then drain system off to where the bleach won't kill good vegetation ( not the septic tank!) water should no longer smell of bleach nor sulfur. Ask Cabin Fever for better instructions.

Grandma's well water tasted so sulfery, the aunts concocted a special mixture of Koolaid flavors to get any the the grandkids to drink the stuff.

[tallpines]

More advice needed here...........

In our house it is just one faucet that smells ----- only the cold water.

Have you got an instruction sheet for just doing one line rather than the whole well?

[Callieslamb]

In our house it's the hot water. If we don't use hot water for a couple of days - it gets much worse from water just sitting in the lines. We find that between bleaching times, if we just run the water through the lines for 20 minutes, the smell isn't nearly as bad.

[Cabin Fever]

If the source of your hydrogen sulfide smell (rotten egg odor) is just in your hot or just in your cold water, check out this information for determining the source of the problem:
http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/e...de.html#source

[mtfarmchick]

Do you have a water softener? When we actually have salt in ours it makes the hot water smell. There's a rod inside the water heater that caused the smell I guess. We never had the issue until we replaced the 15+ year old water heater.

[rancher1913]

did a service call years ago for foul tasting water, found a skunk had somehow got into the well casing and drowned. that was one nasty clean and disinfection job and the owner almost fainted when I showed it to him. probably not your problem but this thread just made me remember that.

[Use Less]

The amount of sulfur dioxide that comes through can be affected by weather conditions.