Well water treatment? Please help.

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Gary Slusser

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I have a number of brand names availabile and all require annual lamp replacement because the lamps are rated at 9000 continuous hours of operation. The price of of a lamp depends on the brand of the light but... usually about $70-$100 plus freight. A UV light also provides bacteria free water.

There are a number of options on lights and all add to the price of the light. Lights are gpm rated, the higher the gpm rating the higher the price. All lights are flow controlled so the sizing is critical.

All UV lights have minimum water quality requirements that must be met.
 

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MaxBlack said:
Many thanks Bob for your informative post. I was looking at a friend's UV system just yesterday, and was wondering why he had a filter/carbon filter combo AHEAD OF his UV mechanism, and now I understand. At least, I'm assuming that the company he bought the pump/filter/UV board from (pre-assembled) knew what they were doing! ;)

Not all UV 'kills' cypto and giardia, only class A lights do.

And all carbon comes with a warning of it not to be installed on water of unknown microbiological content. Here they installed carbon on water know contain bacteria...
 

Leejosepho

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Gary Slusser said:
A UV light also provides bacteria free water.

There are a number of options on lights and all add to the price of the light. Lights are gpm rated, the higher the gpm rating the higher the price. All lights are flow controlled so the sizing is critical.

All UV lights have minimum water quality requirements that must be met.

What would happen if I put a UV light in a recirculation line going back into my IRB-infected well? My guess is that the effect would be minimal since the returned water would again be exposed to the IRB.
 

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You can't use UV on IRB etc. because when the cell dies, iron is introduced back into the water and that will preclude the light from 'working' by coating the quartz sleeve which prevents light from passing through it into the water. Which prevents any 'killing'. Actually UV doesn't kill any bacteria, it prevents reproduction.
 

Leejosepho

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A professional water-treatment guy has just suggested occasional doses of food-grade hydrogen peroxide to address the IRB in my well, and this is the beginning of my investigation into that approach.

Does anybody here have any related info or experience?
 

MaxBlack

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I'll say only lee that I researched H2O2 myself a couple years ago with the idea of using it in our storage tank (as a disinfectant and "rotten egg smell" remover) and ended-up not using it. Bought a bottle and man, it's potent stuff to be sure. Still have it under refrigeration somewhere (!). Prolly in the back of the beer fridge!

For my purposes anyway, I decided that it was way too difficult to determine how-and-when-to-add-how-much and then to my knowledge there's no way to test for it. At least I can test for chlorine! ;)

Here's the cheapest I could find:

http://www.dfwx.com/h2o2products.html
 

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What is the size of the smallest microorganisms that need to be filtered?

Bacteria/protozoa etc. and virus's.
 

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alternety said:
What is the size of the smallest microorganisms that need to be filtered?

Bacteria/protozoa etc. and virus's.
Viruses can't be removed by filters. They must be killed.

Filtering bacteria is a marginal proposition. The usual solution is to kill them with disinfectant but some, such as Legionella, form in places where they are protected from disinfectants and are difficult to get rid of. You need to filter to clear out the solids so that disinfectant or UV can be effective. It is customary to maintain a disinfectant residual to protect against recontamination.

Protozoa and organisms such as cryptosporidium are more difficult to kill with disinfectants. They can be neutralized with UV, and enough chlorine with long enough exposure will kill Giardia.

Crypto is hard to kill with chlorine as Milwaukee and Seneca Lake State Park discovered. More than 20 deaths in Milwaukee in the early 90's when the filters got out of control, and more than 2000 cases of crypto at Seneca Lake State Park in 2005. The Seneca Lake case is getting a lot of Google hits for class action lawsuits.

The standard treatment for surface waters and systems affected by surface waters (such as springs and shallow or dug wells) is filtration AND disinfection, including a disinfectant residual to the point of use.

POSTSCRIPT:
It is not customary to test the water for Giardia or similar organisms, because they may be present at times and maybe not at another time. If you have a water supply that can be contaminated by surface water (anything but a deep well) the usual practice is to treat it to be safe.

If it is your own well, you may of course do what you want, but if it is a public water supply you must comply with the EPA Surface Water Treatment Rule.

This is not a forum where people running public water supplies are likely to come for answers. Individuals can balance the risks and decide what they want to do.

If I were getting my water supply from a spring, or a shallow well subject to infiltration of surface water, I would filter and disinfect it.
 
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I did some poking around. What I found said bacteria are above .2 microns, protozoa (and cycts) above 1 micron, and viriuses above .018 microns.

Does that sound right?
 

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Gary Slusser said:
Ozone doesn't cause corrosion because we use in it plastics and vent any 'excess' out of the water. I've not heard of any corrosion by peroxide either, it's by-product is water.

I am still trying to decide how to clean/treat my actual well and the water still in it before bringing it into the house, and I had been wondering whether hydrogen peroxide would belong in this category:

Gary Slusser said:
AFAIK there is no way to introduce ozone into a well and if there were, it probably would harm drop pipe, pumps etc. as chalorine pellet droppers can.

speedbump said:
Gary is correct about putting o-zone into the well. I have a very good customer. A fish farmer who was talked into putting o-zone down his well by means of a 1/4" plastic tube. They injected it right on top of the pump. Well after the pump fell off the pipe and the pipe was full of holes, hot to mention what damage was done to the casing, he removed it. Of course, we had to fish all this half eaten stuff from his well. Same goes with dropping chlorine tablets down a well. Just don't do it, is the best advice I have.

As soon as I can get all the various thoughts, advice and other pieces of information gathered for some comprehensive considerations, I am sure an overall plan will come to mind!
 

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alternety said:
I did some poking around. What I found said bacteria are above .2 microns, protozoa (and cycts) above 1 micron, and viriuses above .018 microns.

Does that sound right?
Cryptosporidium is about 3 microns, giardia about 5 (maybe a little bigger).

Bacteria and viruses are so small that it doesn't matter to me.

I install treatment systems for small public water supplies. I use the tightest cotton wound cartridges that I can get, followed by 1 micron absolute filters (Poly-pleat PP-BB-20-1) from Harmsco to treat surface water supplies, and always use chlorine from bleach at about 1mg per liter.

I have never had a report of anyone getting sick from treated water from my systems. After I installed the first one more than 10 years ago the camp director told me that they noticed fewer kids going to the infirmary. They had been using lake water, chlorinated only.
 

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Bob NH said:
...I use the tightest cotton wound cartridges that I can get, followed by 1 micron absolute filters (Poly-pleat PP-BB-20-1) from Harmsco to treat surface water supplies, and always use chlorine from bleach at about 1mg per liter.

I have never had a report of anyone getting sick from treated water from my systems...
Bob NH you gave us a rundown on your filtration systems awhile back but I cannot for the life of me find it. Do you remember where you made that post, or maybe you can tell us again here OTTOYH? Thanks.
 

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Thanks for the replys. But I do care about filtering bacteria and not using chlorine. If someone can verify or correct the size of bacteria, I will deal with the filtering.

Thanks.
 

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MaxBlack said:
Bob NH you gave us a rundown on your filtration systems awhile back but I cannot for the life of me find it. Do you remember where you made that post, or maybe you can tell us again here OTTOYH? Thanks.

I install small systems where people can't get a well but must supply water for public water users, which are defined as systems delivering water to more than 25 customers for more than 60 days. That includes a lot of summer youth camps and a few other places. I am often the last resort after they have spent $thousands on wells that don't meet their needs.

I visit the sites, look at what they have, and engineer a system to use as much as possible of existing equipment while producing water that meets the EPA Surface Water Treatment Rule. That requirement is to filter and disinfect to remove or inactivate 99.9% of giardia lamblia cysts. A more recent requirement is to remove 99% of cryptosporidium oocysts. Anything that meets those requirements also kills viruses and bacteria.

Most of the systems treat 5000 to 20,000 gallons per day of water, but there is really no limit. The smallest system is less than 500 gallons per day where the water is pumped to a tank and the people carry away what they need in large buckets. That small one was declared a public water supply because they had more than 25 users carrying water from a dug well for more than 60 days per year.

The water is pumped from the lake or other water source, chlorinated and filtered through the cotton filters in a housing that I developed to put lots of surface area in an inexpensive housing, then into a contact tank that has enough contact time to kill or inactivate 97% of any giardia that get through the first filter. The tank is usually a 1500 to 3000 gallon polyethylene tank with baffles inside to prevent circulation directly from inlet to outlet.

Water is pumped from that tank through the Harmsco 1-micron-absolute filters (Cartridge PP-BB-20-1) into the distribution system. A chlorine residual is maintained throughout the system. http://www.harmsco.com/uploads/pdf/harmsco_polypleat_catalog.pdf

Operation of the system is automated so the operator has only to keep the chlorine tank supplied with sodium hypochlorite (usually generic household bleach) and make sure that the system is working.

The operators make daily measurements of water usage, chlorine residual, turbidity, pH, and temperature so they can verify that the system is meeting requirements. They are required to get a special "small systems operator" license, but operating the system depends more on diligence than on any special skills. Turbidity is never a problem because the cartridges are significantly better than is needed for the job.

This is a kind of hobby business in my retirement. I usually hear about a job when someone calls and says; "I can't get a well here and they told me to call you. Can you come up here and look at my place, and how fast can you put in a system?" My best (only) advertising is people who have my systems.
 
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MaxBlack

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Thanks for that. I have a rainwater collection system and though we don't drink the water (we buy drinking water) I still worry about problems from toothbrushing, facewashing (eyes, nasal passages) etc. Will look to apply your principles here...
 

Gary Slusser

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Sounds great BobNH. I'm sure that with personel present and tasked to maintain your individually designed/engineered systems, that they work very well. I too have been involved in treatment of Small systems in PA but not using surface water, well water only without the possibility of cysts or crypto. I have been involved with some residential DIY surface water customers around the country though.

The equipment you use is much larger than needed in most residential installations and the residential owner is not up to much maintenance and none at all if it's needed daily. I use automatically backwashed turbidity filters and the only periodic maintenance on the system is cleaning and replenishing the disinfection equipment. That's only every few months.
 
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