Sediment

A week or so ago I woke up to take a shower and the water flow in the upstairs shower was really slow. As a test, I bypassed our water softener and the flow came back. I left it that way until I could look at it further.

Earlier this week my wife mentioned there were "black spots" in the bottom of the toilets. It looked like sediment so I cut the house off after the tank and drew off 1 gal from the spicket ahead of the tank (after throwing away the first 2 gallons to make sure the spicket was clean). In short order you could see some glittery sediment in the bottom. I suspect that is what clogged the water softener and what kept us from seeing it initially.

Yesterday my wife mentioned there was a problem with the washing machine and the downstairs sink. I pulled the filter screen on the dowstairs sink and it was clogged with sediment. I suspect the same for the washing machine.

Some questions:
1) Is the water still safe to drink (for now)?
2) What could have caused this to show up all of a sudden?
3) What should our next step / options be?

P.S. We live in Connecticut and house/well is about 16 years old.

I saw a house with a small 10" string-wound filter cartridge that had about 1/4" inch of fine sand in the bottom of the housing, and some in the cartridge, after about 3 months of people living in a new house.

There are those who say that "whole house" filters are junk, but if I were on a well that was sending sediment to my house I would put in a filter. I would use at least a 20" long cartridge unit, or two 10" units in parallel (so the flow is split beween them). The double housing will increase your change interval by a factor of at least 3 which will reduce the cost of cartridges.

If you have settleable sand (meaning visible sand) in the water from the well then there is a good techincal reason to install the cartridges horizontal rather than vertical, with the inlet port down. That will cause much more of the sand to settle in the housing rather than get caught in the filter so you will get longer life. The down-side is that the water will run out of the cartridge when you remove the housing unless you set up a drain (which can be done). Also, you can catch the water from the housing in a bucket.

It is nice to have a clear housing so you can see how much sand is being collected in the housing.

A automatically backwashed turbidity filter is a much better choice but only go with either if you want to apply a band aid to the problem and not do anything to correct the cause of the problem or, you can't find or fix the cause but... disposal cartrige filters are nowhere near as good as a backwashed filter.

The cause of this can be a change in the well. It could be you are in a drought, or new well(s) have been drilled in your area pulling the water table/static water level in your well down. Or something else in the well; as simple as a water leak in the drop pipe spraying into the side of the hole loosening this stuff.