Iron

[Peak53]

No, not the shootin' kind, but the kind in water. I was looking for ways to mitigate the unpleasantness and suddenly remembered the Fount of All Knowledge, Practical and Otherwise. Why a bunch of old gun guys/gals are so smart, I'll never know. Here's the back story.

My little subdivision way out in the boonies has been peacefully delivering spring water through an extensive pipeline system for over half a century. About 35 years ago, we developed some bacteriological contamination and solved that by having each home install an in-line filter and UV treatment - about $400-500. Nobody ever got sick, nobody died (at least from the water). The State Health Dept. eventually found us and decreed that we needed to build a fancy disinfection plant or get the heck off the spring. We elected to drill a well at each house. We have 56 mostly summer/vacation homes. Expensive, but not as expensive as building and operating a treatment plant in perpetuity.

In the meantime, we had to install a temporary unapprovable solar powered chlorine injection system that has to be tested every day and recharged with chlorox every other day, frequent reports, etc. Yours truly is in charge. It's a mile up to the spring via ATV. We negotiated three years to make the transition, ending this October under threat of $1000/day fines to the HOA.

So, I got our well in last year, sat on it until this July, got the pump and plumbing done and now have plenty of perfectly safe water that tastes like iron. My first test showed about 2 ppm. I switched my filter from 15 micron to 5 micron and now test about 0.5 ppm. The water is now drinkable, but "disappointing." Looking for some way to get it below 0.3 ppm, which is supposedly the detectable level. Fancy water softeners and such seem to run $600-$1000 and need a lot of maintenance. Is there some filter I could swap in to help? Other ideas?

PS: As of today, I need 4 more disconnects completed, then I get to tell the State to go pound sand

 

[K Frame Keith]

We use a water softener with iron fighter pellets. It solved our iron problem immediately and the system has been working every day for 6 years. Our softener is a kenmore. Good luck!

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

My farmhouse had a shallow well (19 feet deep), and sometimes had sulfur and sometimes iron, but in general was sweet. I installed an in line particle cartridge filter between the pressure tank and the interior household use. I later added a second filter canister for activated charcoal.

The condo we moved to has extremely high chlorine levels (8-9 PPM free Ch.) I use the same system here, (but only the charcoal cartridge). My filter here gets saturated around the 2 to 2.5 year of usage.

All my filters and the plumbing to install them, came from Menards (about 6 years ago).

Ivan

 

[Peak53]

Thanks for the advice. My well is 180' through unconsolidated rock. The damn thing kept collapsing, so they had to steel case it from the surface to the bottom at a $3600 charge for the pipe alone.

8-9 ppm chlorine is extreme! We only have to maintain between 2-4, which is high. Most municipal systems are at 0.2. Anything over 3 ppm is obnoxious, so I keep it on the low side. I'll look into the activated charcoal, but not sure that will mitigate the iron.

 

[Gunslinger808]

Wife and I just drink bottled water, we have a delivery that brings us usually five 5 gallon bottles every other week.

That came about when we noticed the water smelled of chlorine, she got out a pool test strip and tested our tap water.
It showed as unsafe for pool use (too much chlorine).

Yeah.

 

[DWalt]

There are some systems which electrolyze salt water to produce hypochlorite ions (basically what's in laundry bleach). All it takes is periodic addition of salt and they are completely automatic, injecting only just enough hypochlorite. I don't know if such units are made small enough for use with single household systems, but some are made for swimming pool use. There are also lime precipitation treatment units made to precipitate Iron out as Iron Hydroxide, but again I don't know if there are small units available for single home use. It acts somewhat like a filter. There are numerous filtration systems on the market which claim to remove iron. For drinking water alone, best answer would be a reverse osmosis unit, but they waste a lot of water.

 

[Golddollar]

There are some systems which electrolyze salt water to produce hypochlorite ions (basically what's in laundry bleach). All it takes is periodic addition of salt and they are completely automatic, injecting only just enough hypochlorite. I don't know if such units are made small enough for use with single household systems, but some are made for swimming pool use.

I have what sounds like this kind of system in my house. Our town has very hard water so I had the system put in when my house was built. It has been going strong for 14+ years. Between that and the water filtration system in the refrigerator I get pretty good tasting water.