Tim Doyle
New Member
Hi all, new guy here. Bought a new to me house about 18 mos ago and there's a long-ish list of shortcomings that I'm working on. One of the big items is the plumbing. Its a double wide mobile home, built in 1988 and as such everything is old...still works but its old. Old grey poly water feed pipes for example. My water has always been a bit sulfury and sedimenty, but its been very usable until recently.
We just put up a pool, I tossed the garden hose in to get a little water in the bottom to gauge exactly how level we got it (luckily we did a good job) and ordered a water delivery. Went to work putting the ladder together and unfortunately forgot the hose was running for about 2 hours. Shut the hose off, knowing from past experience at another house that I may have drawn the well down too low and stirred up some sediment.
Later that night as the toilet water began to get silty I knew I was right (this was Sunday evening), but it was near the end of the evening and in the last experience when this happened to me, letting it sit overnight tended to settle out the bulk of the sediment. Unfortunately this hasn't happened here. Looking for advice before I throw in the towel and have to call for help.
The main line coming in from the well has two canister water filters, this are the 2.5" typical low cost filter canisters you can get anywhere. I usually have one with 5micron media and the second one with charcoal to help reduce the sulfur smell...these filters are the first thing in line coming in, which I believe is an incorrect configuration as I'm basically filtering all the water that goes into the pressure tank, right? After the canisters there is a silver UV canister, the UV part of which has failed so its basically just a canister now as I've unplugged it from the wall. After that it goes to the pressure tank, a typical blue air bladder cylinder which, remarkably enough still seems to have a good bladder and holds its air pressure properly. Pressure tank goes off the the house plumbing. See first photo for a visual...pipes are definitely a convoluted mess.
The silt over the last few days has gotten progressively worse, not better which strikes me as odd. Right when I noticed it I opted to change the filters, putting in 5 micron media in both to try to catch the bulk of everything coming in. Oddly enough though, they aren't getting plugged up, I still have good water pressure at all the taps and the well feed line seems to work properly. I recently replaced the two old canisters with a pair of cheapies from Lowes, $20 each, there is no bypass function, they just run the water through the media...I've double checked the installation, they are definitely in the right direction and I am definitely using proper fitting media.
The toilet bowl is muddy looking, cannot see the bottom of the bowl at all and its brown like the silt is dissolved dirt, which I would expect the two canisters to catch a lot of and eventually to clog up with mud if its coming in THAT silty. This has led me to think that maybe I've got a silt problem in my pressure tank...if the water has has sediment for the last 32 years and the tank is that old, why not? So today I shut off the house feed valve from the tank and the pump feed into the tank, got out my 5 gallon bucket and drained it with a hose until the low pressure switch cut it off. Filled it to full pressure and repeated for a total of about a half dozen times...water was still coming out cloudy so I'm not really sure if I've found anything or just an exercise in wasting time...if the low pressure switch cuts off the output from the tank, is it still leaving water and therefore sediment possibly built up in there? The spigot I used is the one under the pressure control switch in the second photo. The buckets I took out were grey and cloudy, didn't seem like air bubbles...there was a smell of sulfur but it was not crazy strong. There were larger chunks floating on the top after it settled some, under a magnifier they look like they may be rust...I'm talking about bits maybe a quarter inch long...far too big to ever have passed through my filters. I'm kind of stuck on having stirred something up inside the house, I keep looking at the pressure tank as the culprit..could be the UV tank though, I'm not sure what the inside of those things looks like, but I imagine it would be an easy thing to remove and just replace with a couple elbows and some pipe if that is a good idea.
So apart from a top down rebuild, which I'm not ready to do just yet, does anyone have any suggestions I can investigate? Is the pressure tank silt a valid theory or am I likely chasing my tail? I know the water filters are in the wrong spot but until I do a major plumbing reno, there's nowhere to relocate them to right now as the system is unfortunately located in my daughter's closet.
Is there anything I can check at the well itself? Its an unknown depth, pump is an unknown age...is it possible there is a screen on it that might have fallen off? Or can it be raised a bit to possibly pull it out of the sediment right pool of water and into a cleaner part?
Am I doomed and need to get that plumbing reno started now?
Thanks in advance.
We just put up a pool, I tossed the garden hose in to get a little water in the bottom to gauge exactly how level we got it (luckily we did a good job) and ordered a water delivery. Went to work putting the ladder together and unfortunately forgot the hose was running for about 2 hours. Shut the hose off, knowing from past experience at another house that I may have drawn the well down too low and stirred up some sediment.
Later that night as the toilet water began to get silty I knew I was right (this was Sunday evening), but it was near the end of the evening and in the last experience when this happened to me, letting it sit overnight tended to settle out the bulk of the sediment. Unfortunately this hasn't happened here. Looking for advice before I throw in the towel and have to call for help.
The main line coming in from the well has two canister water filters, this are the 2.5" typical low cost filter canisters you can get anywhere. I usually have one with 5micron media and the second one with charcoal to help reduce the sulfur smell...these filters are the first thing in line coming in, which I believe is an incorrect configuration as I'm basically filtering all the water that goes into the pressure tank, right? After the canisters there is a silver UV canister, the UV part of which has failed so its basically just a canister now as I've unplugged it from the wall. After that it goes to the pressure tank, a typical blue air bladder cylinder which, remarkably enough still seems to have a good bladder and holds its air pressure properly. Pressure tank goes off the the house plumbing. See first photo for a visual...pipes are definitely a convoluted mess.
The silt over the last few days has gotten progressively worse, not better which strikes me as odd. Right when I noticed it I opted to change the filters, putting in 5 micron media in both to try to catch the bulk of everything coming in. Oddly enough though, they aren't getting plugged up, I still have good water pressure at all the taps and the well feed line seems to work properly. I recently replaced the two old canisters with a pair of cheapies from Lowes, $20 each, there is no bypass function, they just run the water through the media...I've double checked the installation, they are definitely in the right direction and I am definitely using proper fitting media.
The toilet bowl is muddy looking, cannot see the bottom of the bowl at all and its brown like the silt is dissolved dirt, which I would expect the two canisters to catch a lot of and eventually to clog up with mud if its coming in THAT silty. This has led me to think that maybe I've got a silt problem in my pressure tank...if the water has has sediment for the last 32 years and the tank is that old, why not? So today I shut off the house feed valve from the tank and the pump feed into the tank, got out my 5 gallon bucket and drained it with a hose until the low pressure switch cut it off. Filled it to full pressure and repeated for a total of about a half dozen times...water was still coming out cloudy so I'm not really sure if I've found anything or just an exercise in wasting time...if the low pressure switch cuts off the output from the tank, is it still leaving water and therefore sediment possibly built up in there? The spigot I used is the one under the pressure control switch in the second photo. The buckets I took out were grey and cloudy, didn't seem like air bubbles...there was a smell of sulfur but it was not crazy strong. There were larger chunks floating on the top after it settled some, under a magnifier they look like they may be rust...I'm talking about bits maybe a quarter inch long...far too big to ever have passed through my filters. I'm kind of stuck on having stirred something up inside the house, I keep looking at the pressure tank as the culprit..could be the UV tank though, I'm not sure what the inside of those things looks like, but I imagine it would be an easy thing to remove and just replace with a couple elbows and some pipe if that is a good idea.
So apart from a top down rebuild, which I'm not ready to do just yet, does anyone have any suggestions I can investigate? Is the pressure tank silt a valid theory or am I likely chasing my tail? I know the water filters are in the wrong spot but until I do a major plumbing reno, there's nowhere to relocate them to right now as the system is unfortunately located in my daughter's closet.
Is there anything I can check at the well itself? Its an unknown depth, pump is an unknown age...is it possible there is a screen on it that might have fallen off? Or can it be raised a bit to possibly pull it out of the sediment right pool of water and into a cleaner part?
Am I doomed and need to get that plumbing reno started now?
Thanks in advance.