Hopefully posting in this existing thread won't confuse things, but the title is applicable for me, so I figured that continuing the discussion in this thread might be better than starting a new thread.
We just moved to a new house (the house is about 25 years old). It has a well and we were told that the water is high in iron and manganese. Here are the specific numbers:
Odor: None
Turbidity: 25
Color: 40
pH: 6.71
Nitrite Nitrogen: < 0.001
Nitrate Nitrogen: < 1.00
Chloride: 15
Hardness: 76
Iron: 5.32
Manganese: 0.26
Sodium: 7.3
Sulfate: 19.3
When doing the water test, our friend (who installs various water treatment systems) ran the water for a while (I believe for the purpose of doing the radon in water test) and noticed water discoloration and sediment. We were told by others (including our realtor) that this was probably just because an excessive amount of water was being run through the system in a short timeframe, but that didn't jive with me because our last house had a well and we could run it for a long, long time with no discoloration ever appearing. Nevertheless, we really liked the house, so we bought it hoping that any issues could be resolved without spending too much money.
The holding tank appears to be 19 years old (I believe it is a Well-X-Trol brand, which has a bladder). There is also a filter, and we're using a 5 micron filter in it.
Most recently we've encountered a couple of problems:
1) Our fairly new (about 2 years old) Bosch front-load (low water consumption?) clothes washer will beep mid-cycle and show an error message indicating that it's not getting enough water pressure. We unhooked the hoses and found a considerable amount of sediment clogging the metal screens/filters, which we cleaned out. It's quite possible that some/most of this was from our last house, which also had a well and had definite sediment issues (it had no cartridge filter or trap off of the well tank). Nevertheless, even after cleaning the metal screens out thoroughly, we still get the washer errors quite a bit.
2) We're seeing visible discoloration in the sinks when we run the water, and staining in our toilets. The stains sometimes appear yellow or light brown, but at the worst are orange. We replaced our 5 micron filter the other day, and the existing one was very orange. Even after changing the filter, however, the water in the toilets are still looking discolored. I haven't noticed any odor, however (I've read that iron would likely produce a rotten-egg smell, but I haven't noticed any of that). I believe that the sinks are running cleaner, so I'm thinking that sediment build-up in the tanks behind the toilets may be contributing to them still looking dirty. However, our water expert friend indicated that the 5 micron filter really won't do a lot in terms of stopping iron.
I should mention that my wife and I both work full-time, and it's common for us to run dishes and laundry during the weekend, rather than staggering it out through the week I know we probably should. Again, though, we did the same in our last house with a well and didn't have the problems we're having here.
Right now my wife is panicking because we have a full house coming this Saturday for a family Thanksgiving meal, and a few guests staying with us overnight. She doesn't want the toilets to look gross or the showers to run dirty water. My hope is that we can get things under control a bit (short term) by watching our water consumption better this week (staggering laundry and dishes). I'm also planning on draining our tank today. Our home inspector suggested that the tank could have an excessive amount of iron buildup/crud at the bottom of the tank, and there may be some benefit to draining it, adding water to the tank, draining again, etc. to clear out the gunk. On that note, I'm also thinking that our toilets might be looking worse because of sediment (high in iron?) that's in the bottom of the holding tanks behind the toilets, and that once I've cleaned out the well tank, I should also shut off the water by the toilets and clean out the sediment there as well.
Meanwhile, our friend is going to get back to us on pricing of a water treatment system, which he said would probably be in the neighborhood of about $2000. He also felt that our tank was very old and that it might make sense to replace it at the same time. The treatment system he was thinking might be best was a Birm filter in conjunction with what sounded to me like an aeration system.
Based on all of the detail I've provided, what are your thoughts/suggestions? If you need additional detail, let me know.