Dorrough
New Member
We have a deep (400 ft) well, drilled last year. Water has always been crystal clear, but hard. We haven't really used much water until recently installing a shower and toilet (talk about luxury living! big improvement over the last three years). When we first tested the water about a week after it was drilled, it had 120 grains hardness and 11 coliform colonies/100 ml. This spring, one year later, we found out the well had never really been disinfected after drilling - the driller told us to pour a couple cups of bleach down the pipe.
So we downloaded some information online and tried cleaning the well cap, pouring a gallon (diluted) of bleach down the well, attaching a hose to the hydrant by the well and washing the walls down for about 20 minutes. We never did smell bleach coming out of the hose. Is there so much water standing in the well that we never got it to recirculate? Or is there such a high flow rate in the aquifer that the bleach just gets washed away before it can be recirculated?
Anyway, waited a week and took another sample at the hydrant. Hardness is now down to 80, coliform bacteria colonies to 2. So we are wondering: maybe our well water is clean - man, it's so deep - and we are just picking up contamination from the hydrant? Or maybe we didn't fully disinfect the well the second time either? Does anyone have experience disinfecting these very deep wells?
Thanks for all the help!
So we downloaded some information online and tried cleaning the well cap, pouring a gallon (diluted) of bleach down the well, attaching a hose to the hydrant by the well and washing the walls down for about 20 minutes. We never did smell bleach coming out of the hose. Is there so much water standing in the well that we never got it to recirculate? Or is there such a high flow rate in the aquifer that the bleach just gets washed away before it can be recirculated?
Anyway, waited a week and took another sample at the hydrant. Hardness is now down to 80, coliform bacteria colonies to 2. So we are wondering: maybe our well water is clean - man, it's so deep - and we are just picking up contamination from the hydrant? Or maybe we didn't fully disinfect the well the second time either? Does anyone have experience disinfecting these very deep wells?
Thanks for all the help!