Our well water recently showed a big spike upward in iron content.
Three possible causes spring to mind.
- Our pressure tank (aka, Accumulator) turned into a galvanic cell in combination with our copper pipe and we will soon have a leak. I get between 10 and 15 years per tank.
- The bentonite that was injected around the 5" PVC sheathing let go and is letting the water from the gravel-vein at 90' below bleed into the water we had been pulling from a strata of sandstone at 240'.
- Our draw of water etched a channel at the 240' level and linked us up with a high-iron seam.
My money is on problem Number One.
The lovely Mrs ERJ suggested that we upgrade to a fiber-glass pressure tank. She is looking ahead fifteen years and thinking that I will not want to deal with this problem again.
Fiberglass pressure tanks are significantly pricier than steel. But like they say: Buy quality and you cry once. Buy based on price and you will cry twice.
Or as I used to tell my young troops in the Army\, " Do it right or do it over".
ReplyDeleteI had to replace the tank last year... think it was about 800 or 1000 for a steel one.
ReplyDeleteWhile I had it all apart, I replaced all the galvanized pipe, too. It was a mish-mash of previous installs and repairs, some PVC, some copper, some... I dunno, out it all comes!
Unions are good! Put about 3 of them in there! The NEXT time I have to do something, it'll be a breeze!
Some of the more expensive steel units come with an anode rod but it cannot be replaced the way an anode rod on a water heater can be replaced.
DeleteMrs ERJ wants me to replace the tank before it pukes. Probably a good idea. She says the iron makes keeping toilets clean very difficult and laundry is not easy, either.
Can you get a water sample from that shallower aquifer, say, from a nearby well? My money would be on that. Next time use cement instead of bentonite gel.
ReplyDeleteYou've pulled your primary aquifer too hard, and now water has channeled through from the upper aquifer, which is probably more prolific. Did you have a period of abnormally heavy use anytime over the past year or so?
DeleteWe had signs that we were starting to have a problem before our pump puked. When they installed the new pump they ran it for ten minutes with no back-pressure. That may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.
DeleteThere was a marked step downward in water quality after the new pump was installed.
Are well tanks with bladders not used in Michigan? Or is the bladder failure causing the high iron?
ReplyDeleteThe bladder does not contain the water, it contains the air that provides the pressure.
DeleteI believe the water is typically in contact with a painted surface of the iron shell. I could be wrong.
I'm middlin' sure you have that backwards, about what's in the bladder? Have you cut one of those open?
DeleteOur old galvanized tanks didn't come with bladders, although I realize that the newer ones do. We used to cut the well off, isolate & drain the tank every few months, and then seal it up and put it on line again. The tank would start full of air, but then the pump would fill it with water and compress the new air cushion at the top. It would generally last a few months before we would need to repeat the procedure.
DeleteThank you for the gentle correction. And I know the bladder comes precharged with air, but my mind keeps flipping it around because, of course you would want to keep the water away from the tank. Sigh.
DeleteYou sound like a man blessed with a Proverbs 31 wife!
ReplyDeleteFiberglass is the way to go. If the other issues are also true, the fiberglass is still excellent for long term.
There are iron filters, I see plenty so it's a matter of local recommendations. Sometimes to cost isn't installation but how often and how expensive the filters are.
+1 on the Fibreglass tank.
ReplyDeleteWhen I had the motel, we put in a fiberglass well tank
ReplyDeleteIt's still going strong 26 years later.
YMMV
Heavy iron/hard water here in S Michigan. It is a real issue. We have )just after the pump) a SS mesh screen filter, followed by a 100u corded cartridge filter (4.5” dia x 20” long). I clean/change these twice a year.
ReplyDeleteDownstream is a water softener, followed by a bank of SIX 4.5” x 20” cartridge filters which get progressively finer in filtration from 100u down to 5u. The last filter is active charcoal. The pressure drop across each bank is measured w gages, and filters are only swapped as they clog and pressure drop exceeds a few PSI.
The improvement in water quality was tremendous - toilets, laundry, and drinking water all went from rusty and dusty to clean and clear.
Expensive to install (approx $600 in the filter system and a couple thousand in the water softener) - but worth the benefit IMO.
The water softener is Kinetico, and the filters housings and gages were Aquaboon brand sourced on Amazon.
The 4.5” x 20” filters were various brands and filter types: cord, pleated, cast, and carbon from 100u in steps finer and finer all the way down to 5u.
(FYI u = micron in filter speak)
After a couple of years of fighting rust stains in toilets, dish washer, clothes washer, and one rather ornery wife - I just threw the whole nine yards at it once and for all and crushed the problem.
Have been running this solution four years now - no regrets so far.
PS: Wife is still capable of being ornery, but no longer so over water quality!-)
DeleteA wise man from Parma once said "The cutest kittens have the sharpest claws"...or something like that.
DeletePro Tip: Pricey though it may be, buy the very largest pressure tank that you can afford, or have room to install. Builders install a small one, usually a 6-8 gallon draw down unit, so the pump starts frequently. It is the number of starts that kills pumps; since they are water cooled, once started they can run for a very long time with no problem, so a larger tank (largest?) minimizes the number of starts. Way back when, I replaced a 6-gallon with two 46 gallon tanks, and had plumbed in for 3 but the distributor had only 2; on those occasions when I had to run the generator to get water, it meant running the gennie for about 10-12 minutes to fill both tanks and I could - sometimes - get by with having to do that only once a day.
ReplyDeleteThere's a thing called a cycle stop valve, designed to keep the pump running as long as the water consumption is above a certain flow rate. One of the principals at the manufacturer is fairly active at the Terry Love plumbing forum and offers a lot of information on them. I don't have one, but fell down the rabbit hole reading about them while trying to figure out my priming issue on my parent's well pump.
ReplyDelete