(Contaminated) Well Woes: Questions

[LFRJ]

Last Friday we posted about having our well pump and pressure tank replaced, only the Well Man re-used the drop casing which had been hand pulled and tossed aside across the fowl-littered lawn. S.O tried to clean with bleach water before he re-inserted, but apparently to no avail. Water tests came back positive with dangerous levels of bacteria and E-coli. So, Well man is coming back to re-do the entire job properly. Until then, and since his last visit - we're drinking bottled water.

Questions:

1) Will re-doing the job and re-shocking the well likely take care of this fiasco? If not, what next???? (It tested clean when we bought the place 5 years ago)

2) After treating/chorinating the well, how long should we wait until we flush & test again? You'd think the Well Man would be able to tell me this, but frankly, I'm more confident seeking outside opinions.

3) We can continue buying water from the store but we have goats (1 pregnant), fowl and a couple of dogs who are left to drink the water. Are they somewhat resistant? Or should I be boiling up buckets of H2o for some of them?

4) I've been planning to butcher off a number fowl - Holidays coming and all. I'll have to wait at this point until I have clean water with which to process, but I don't have to worry about the meat would I? That is, If they're semi-okay drinking it until we get this sorted out, the meat and organs should still be fine. Right?

Thanks in advance. Sure hope this nightmare turns around!

[jwal10]

Need to shock and recirculate water back down well casing to try to decontaminate as much as possible. Needs to set 24 hours before test. Pump good to flush and then take sample. Animals drink the same as what was on the ground anyway. I wouldn't worry about the animals. Butcher after water comes back good. Good luck....James

[littlebitfarm]

Re-shocking will take care of bacteria. When you redo it use liquid bleach (unscented). The tablets don't always dissolve like you think they will. Knowing that your well is contaminated, I would start with a gallon of bleach. Let it sit in the well a couple hours. Then use the kitchen faucet, until you smell bleach there. Then use all the other faucets and toilets to get bleach water through there. Make sure you run enough hot water to get a bleach smell through there too.

Grab the garden hose and shove it in the top of the well and turn it on. Let the water circulate for a bit and then turn it off. This should have chlorinated water through your entire plumbing system. Try not to use the water, so it sits everywhere for a day.

Next day run the water at the kitchen sink again. You should still smell bleach after like 30 minutes. If there is no bleach smell that probably means you needed more bleach and it has been used up. Start over again. If you still have a bleach smell then you want to use the water until the smell goes away (2 days, 2 weeks, all depends on the well and amount of water used). No smell means you have gotten fresh water into the well.

After the smell goes away, wait a week or so before getting a new sample. You want the chlorine gone because there is no point in testing chlorinated water. I would also probably go back after a month and resample, just to be sure.

Health department here recommends testing wells every 6 months. Just because your well was clean 5 years ago, doesn't mean it was clean last month.

I don't worry about critters and bacteria, hasn't been a problem here. Do wait for a good water test before butchering.

Kathie

[haypoint]

Did the local Health Department test the water? If so, they now have a record of a contaminated well on your property.
Bottled bleach is just a few percent bleach and the rest is water. Let the Health Department advise what to use.

Once the chicken crap has entered your aquifer, e coli is flowing who knows where. Some places well water is flowing past your well, in other places not so much flow. You may want to treat the well every week for a while.

As with other things, the solution to the pollution is dilution. Pump that well long and hard.

[LFRJ]

No. The Health dept did NOT test - we took a sample into a private lab, though now you have me scared as I have no idea their policy toward reporting such. Would they report back if the problem has been cleared up do you think? Oh, the drama!


I know very little about wells. Have we potentially infected other neighbors wells also? (We all on 5 acre plots, so i imagine we all have our own. Still....).

When you suggest that we 'treat the well every week for a while' - do you mean that we should flush a gallon of bleach through for a month or more? That's quite a few weeks of bottle water, but we'll do what it takes.

As for flushing, we run about 30-50 gallons per day just watering our livestock. Would this not assist in the flushing/dilution?

Thanks

[littlebitfarm]

Originally Posted by LFRJ

No. The Health dept did NOT test - we took a sample into a private lab, though now you have me scared as I have no idea their policy toward reporting such. Would they report back if the problem has been cleared up do you think? Oh, the drama!

I know very little about wells. Have we potentially infected other neighbors wells also? (We all on 5 acre plots, so i imagine we all have our own. Still....).

When you suggest that we 'treat the well every week for a while' - do you mean that we should flush a gallon of bleach through for a month or more? That's quite a few weeks of bottle water, but we'll do what it takes.

As for flushing, we run about 30-50 gallons per day just watering our livestock. Would this not assist in the flushing/dilution?

Thanks

I run a city lab that tests water. Can't speak for Washington, but here we only report private wells to whoever brought the sample in.

It is hard to tell what the well will need in the long run. Easiest way to keep an eye on it is to pick up a chlorine test kit. One that tests pool chlorine will work fine. It will let you keep tabs on chlorine levels to a much finer level than smell or no smell. No easy, do it yourself bacteria tests. You might just maintain a low level chlorine residual for a couple months. Will still have to run more bacteria tests to see what you have.

Regular liquid bleach will work just fine. We treat better than a million gallons everyday with a commercial bleach that is only twice as strong as the stuff you find on the grocery shelf. Not any sort of super strong stuff.

Without knowing how much water is in your well, it is hard to say how much flushing is necessary. My personal well holds little more than enough to do 2 loads of water, takes nothing to flush it out. The well at my rental house, you can't begin to empty. The more water you use the better off you are, as long as you don't empty the water source. Hard to guess how much water you have. You know your well better than we do.

If you want to feel safer about your water a UV light (properly sized) will kill all the nasties and all you have to do is change a bulb about every 9 months.

Kathie

[OkieDavid]

Who pulled the sample? To avoid contamination during sampling use a flame (we use a hand held torch) and sterilize the hydrant, run the water for a minute and THEN collect the sample. A LOT of samples come back bad due to contamination at the hydrant. We pull 10 samples a month at work and the only ones we've ever failed were traced back to failure to sterilize the source pipe. The State of Oklahoma recommends liquid bleach applied as Littlebitfarm suggests.

[PNWest]

For heavens sake. Please fence your well head so critters cant be near. Water soaks down, taking all matter down into the soil.

[rancher1913]

what okie said but make sure you remove the airrator and rubber gasket before torching. also never ever ever ever put anything down a well, even your hose water that comes out of the well should never go back down, only pump out never in our you will worsen the problem. bleach is ok down the well only to sterilize and you need to hyperclorinate to about 20 mgl residual---you need a meter to do this as its criticle that you reach that level of clorination and it needs to stay at that level for 24 hours at least then pump it out for a day and recheck chlorine levels, they should be below 3 mgl for safe drinking.

[copperkid3]

large amount of animal waste AROUND the well head area???
Remove the animals (and the waste) and keep them away from it and
your readings will probably improve in the future......

[littlebitfarm]

Don't collect water samples from one of those frost free yard hydrants. Since they drain back to a weep hole and don't maintain at least 20 PSI there is a high risk of contamination.

Kathie

[jwal10]

You don't know for sure if the water was good before. You might do this twice before taking a sample to the lab. A lot of incorrect information given here. Here is how our state says to do it and this lab. Very easy step by step instructions.

How old is the well. Make double sure the seal is replaced properly after everything is done. IF your well was properly installed there is a seal of concrete and the contamination cannot get to the aquifer. No more than out in any field....James

http://www.allaboratory.com/pdfs/well.pdf

[LFRJ]

At the risk of seeming defensive, but just to clarify, our well head IS contained in a roofed, and insulated well/pump house with a cement floor. I'm therefore not convinced the immediate matter is the fault of our livestock and its management, so much as it was the fact that the Well Man re-used old piping which had been compromised, unless there are other factors such as an old well or broken seal.

Our birds free range. Please let me clear the picture. It's NOT that the area upon which the old piping was cast was purely layered with feces... - it's simply that I can NOT say with 100% certainty that there was NOT animal feces near the pump house. For that matter - I could frankly not guarantee any other given spot on our 4+acres, aside from the interior of our home - and the interior of the pump house, to which animals do not have access.

Thanks all, for your replies. This is frightening for us. A condemned well would be our biggest nightmare - trumping even being declared a wetland.

[GoldenCityMuse]

Pump a few thousand gallons water out of your well. That should dilute it.
Don't worry about any other wells, the ground itself will filter out the bacteria.

Time to look for a different well company to work with from now on.

[unregistered41671]

Originally Posted by jwal10

http://www.allaboratory.com/pdfs/well.pdf

Great link, thanks

[jwal10]

http://public.health.oregon.gov/Heal...ter_sample.pdf

[fishhead]

The company I work for does water testing. We recommend that after letting the bleach sit in the well and entire plumbing system overnight the customer discharges the well water through a sprinkler in the driveway to prevent killing the grass or shocking the septic system. Only after the water coming out of the sprinkler gets rid of the bleach smell do we advise they flush the plumbing system.

[Pink_Carnation]

Did you test the water before having the work done? One place we looked at was on a well that hit water at 15ft with just gravel above which means the water could easily be contaminated from the surface. We were also told that livestock had to be kept 100ft away from a well. I am sure that is meant more for those places where they are crammed together rather than a few free-ranging birds.

[debd0712]

When shocking your well make sure you run water through all water supply outlets until you smell chlorine. People often don't think of washers, icemakers, hot water heaters, dishwashers, outside spigots, etc...

Good luck!