Rust in water after well/pump test

Hello,

I had a pump/well test performed about 1 month ago. All tested good, however, ever since I have had a terrible problem with rust/dirt in the water. The entire house is badly stained, showers, tubs, toilets, sinks. I have a water softner and an OMNI filter in the system. We have always used iron removing salt in the softner. Until this test was performed we never had a problem. I have flushed the boiler holding tank, pressure tank and run the water for over 4 hours the past couple days. The Omni filter element becomes completely filthy after only a few hours now, I have used 6 filters in the last 2 days and I have no other solutions. The water is so bad we can't use it for anything. We are living off bottled water and shwering at friends. The well and pump are only 4.5 years old. What caused this and what can I do about it?

Thanks - emt8948

It sounds like the test stirred up a lot of muck in the well that needs to be flushed out directly, not through your fixtures. Can you isolate the pump discharge and waste that water in the yard? If your well yield is high relative to the pump output you may have to call the tester back and have him flush it all out with a larger pump.

All the crud may have contaminated your water treatment so that needs new resin/ cartridges what have you. Clean well water will continue to flush out the crud in a badly overloaded system.

Also find out how deep the well and what elevation the pump is set. A lot of times if the pump is too close to the bottom the turbulence will stir up a soft bottom.

Until this test was performed we never had a problem.

If it isn't broke , don't fix it !

Just kidding , exactly what are you calling a well/pump test ?

I don't know who you had do a well/pump test, but if they stirred up the well, they should have flushed it clear up top, not hooked it back to the house.

Just who did this and why?

bob...

If the Omni is in front of the softener, remove the cartridge and then regenerate the softener and when it goes into a manual regeneration and when it gets into the backwash position, unplug it for 20 minutes, then plug it in and let it finish the regeneration. You could mix a cup of Iron Out or Super Iron Out in a gallon plus of warm water and pour it down into the water in the salt tank, not through the salt if possible, then wait two hours before doing the above. You get IO etc. at hardware and grocery stores.

You need iron, pH and hardness tests on the raw water. Then to make sure your softener is programmed correctly.

Iron is not muck from the bottom of the well, that's dirt, iron is dissolved into the water. If your water is visibly dirty, it probably isn't iron. It may be rust but probably is dirt. Disposable cartridge filters in front of a water softener is not a good idea unless the water is actually visibly dirty. And then they are a poor choice and you should use a backwashed filter with a control valve on it. That's unless you have a Kinetico softener, they require the prefilter regardless if the water is visibly dirty or not.

>>I had a pump/well test performed about 1 month ago.
Why? And what is a pump/well test? Did they open the well? Did they add chlorine to the well? If they added chlorine did you/they flush the chlorine out of the well after the test?

>>We have always used iron removing salt in the softner.
So you have always had an iron problem. Its just worse now.

First thought; Chlorine will damage and/or ruin water softener resin. If they chlorinated your well and the softener was not bypassed when you flushed your well your resin could be bad. If the well was chlorinated and never flushed, same situation - the chlorine went through your water softener and may have damaged the resin.

Second thought; Try flushing your well. You want to get as many gallons per minute as possible when doing this so bypass all your filters/softeners and open up your outside faucet. If you have two open both of them. Try this for an hour. Watch to make sure you do not run the pump dry. If you do you'll have to turn off power to the pump and wait for the well to recover. If this helps it may pay to do it again in a couple of days.

Third thought; Your water quality changed for the worse. It seems a bit odd it happened after the well test though.

-rick