New sulphur smell...

Here's my problem, I'm hoping for some responses and possible solutions. I have a 5 year old house in south central Michigan on a well that I lived in for three years from new with no problems with water odors. I've been renting it out for the last year, no problems with water odor from the tenant. The house has now sat for two months unoccupied, when I was there three days ago I used one of the toilets, flushed and about a minute later there was a strong sulphur like smell. I ran all the faucets for a half hour, even emptied out the gas water heater and still had the smell, it wasn't as strong but it was still noticeable. I'm stumped, the water is hard and it is hooked up through a softener system (salt). Any ideas to what is causing this smell The house is for sale and the last thing I want is a possible buyer running the water and freaking out. Thanks in advance

Possibly bacteria growing from lack of water use. You can try turning up the water heater to high but that won't help the cold water side.

My dad owns a place in Venice, Florida. It sits all summer while he's in Waterford Michigan then before he returns to snowbirdland, the wife and I go down to get the place ready. She cleans and runs off all the bugs while I go out and chlorinate the well and the system. After that, all is well for another year. But until the chlorination, whew, what a smell.

bob...

Thanks Bob, you're not kidding about the smell, brutal!!! Now I need to search about chlorinating the well...

Can you see the well outside? If so, describe it along with dimensions etc.

bob...

I will have to get back to you on the depth of the well as I'm not in Michigan right now, I should have in my paperwork. It does have a well cap on the pipe coming out of the ground, probably a 5-6 inch diameter PVC casing.

Don't shock the well and run that water through the softener or you'll ruin the resin. So by-pass the softener. You can run some of the chlorinated water into the water heater until you smell chlorine.

Sanitize the softener with a cup of bleach mixed into a gallon of water and poured into the salt tank and then do a manual regeneration. Do this after shocking the well and running off the chlorine.

That pipe sounds like your Pitless Adaptor. You can remove the cap and do like Gary recommended. Don't forget to pour 5 - 10 gallons of fresh water down the well to rinse the chlorine off all the pipe, wire and fittings. Or it will start eating your well like salt eats cars.

bob...

Thanks guys for the insight, without knowing the depth of the well, or if that even matters, how much bleach will I need to use??? Once I get out there and take care of this I will let you know how it turns out, thanks again!!!

Grant

There are many ideas on this one. Here we use about 4 gallons per 100 foot of water in a four inch well.

bob...

Speedpump, for a rock bore well I think that's way too much bleach. We used to use a gallon per 100' in a 6" rock bore and there would be chlorine for more than a week afterwards. That's after running it off too. Sand and gravel wells allow it flow out into the aguafer.

The rock wells here have a pretty good water movement. I have seen times when a driller finished drilling, put the air to it and it pumped off clear. Then there are the caverns that are like large underground lakes. I'm not sure how much chlorine you need for one of those. The county here is the one that specifies 4 gallons for a 100 foot well 4" in diameter. I have no idea how they arrive at that number, but it does seem to work for most wells. If we use much less, we don't smell bleach in the home after firing up the pump again.

I used to abandon wells back when I was young and stupider. We would calculate how much portland would be needed to plug; say a 2" well that was 90 feet deep. We would go get the cement, mix it up, pump it down the tremmie tube then go get more cement. Finally the inspecter would let us pour gravel and sand down to fill a zone where the rock was so pourous it would simply absorb the portland mix. Sometimes, it would take as much a 5 times the calculated amount. I only did a dozen or so of these, so I can imagine much worse scenarios.

bob...