How to disinfect your well water - Shock chlorination
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- Опубліковано 4 вер 2017
- Disinfecting your well water is very important for you to have clean drinking water. In this video, I show you how I disinfect my well. You need to have 200ppm of bleach to disinfect your well which equates to 3 pints per 100 gallons of water.
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Here's a good pipe volume calculator www.rhomarwater.com/calculator...
Here's a great site for well owners with tons of info. wellowner.org/
If you live in Texas, you can search your wells information here. www.twdb.texas.gov/groundwater... - Навчання та стиль
I'm in Florida and I have well water and I've been reading and studying and watching videos how to disinfect my well I called up a couple of well companies that specialize in well water and they want $300 to come out and disinfect my will... Well well I went to the grocery store I bought some Clarox went to the pool store And bought some shock I'm doing it myself.... After everything that I did and follow the instructions on the video my water is beautiful smells great looks great all is good I will be doing this once a year you bet you're sweet as I will you'll take care now and listen to this man he knows what hes talking about.. God-bless and happy drinking well water again
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This is an excellent video! It’s very thorough and easy to follow. I love how you are walking us through step by step.
Thank you 👍
Got my water test results back today. Negative for e-coli but positive for coliform. We've had a ton of rain the last month. I'm surrounded by pasture land. Going to shock my well tomorrow just like you did. Many thanks.
That was a great video. I have to do this to my well and now I am confident that I can do this correctly! Thank you!
Thank you so much for taking the time to make such a detailed video, this really helps a lot! Many blessings 🙏🏽
Interesting. I appreciate folks like you who make these videos. I had mine shocked just because we never knew when it was last done thanks to not being the original owner. Turns out our water was already fine (pulled a sample for testing pre-treatment), but I wanted to do it so we knew. I wasn't quite clear on how to flush it all out afterwards though.
Fantastic, factual presentation. Easy to follow. I have had wells and treated them myself for over 50 years. This is the most complete and factual presentation I have seen. Great job.
We have a well that feeds our spigots outside. Been dealing with a lot of iron bacteria sludge since our new pump was installed and this video has been tremendously helpful.
Awesome 👍
Thanks so much. Just got a new property and put in a well. Had it tested and it was contaminated. Now I can do the job myself.
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We use to drill wells up here in ohio for 30 years. We use to use hth swing pool pills. We would drop 12 pills in well let sit for half hour. Then circulate water with garden hose in to well till you smell chlorine. Then go inside do something to every place you can get water. Let sit 24 hours. Run garden hose till you can't smell chlorine. Do same thing inside. If you want to help septic tank heat water to110 degrees take half cup of yeast add to hot water. Let set for 15 minutes then flush down toilet. Everything he said is true we did it a little different.
Best video explanation I've seen on this. First time using well water and its been 5 months of combating the iron bacteria after a really bad Florida flood. This video saved our butt! Thank you
How do you wash your white close don’t you use chlorine and it goes to whale
Thank you so much for showing me how to do this step by step! Thanks to your video I feel a lot more comfortable with having to do this myself.
Glad it was helpful! 👍
Hi Pete
Ash here from Queensland Australia. This is No. 100 of your UA-cam Videos. I have been watching all of them from the beginning. Keep up the good work 👍
Thank you ☺ I've learned a lot since we moved to the country in my early videos, and still learning.
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Just re-watching your video to refresh my mind for another treatment.
Again, thank you fellow Texan; you have done a great job explaining the procedure clearly. Well done.
Your presentation and procedure are exactly how it should be done. Really excellent video, excellent presentation. Refreshing to see an internet video with correct worthwhile information. I treated water for thirty years in that time I seen all kinds of wrong ways to treat water. Thanks!
Thank you very much! I really appreciate that 👍
Thank you so much for this wonderful video! I’ve been dealing with sulfur for 5 years. I’m going to follow your instructions, which were very clear. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Thanks I just did this a week ago and used more shock than I needed. Such a pain in the ass. Your video is great so thanks again.
Why was it a pain????????
I own a house I bought a few years ago, it was built in 1994. As far as k know the previous owner never shocked the well. I'm getting the water tested this week and I might have to do this. We are in central BC Canada and my well head is a 6 inch metal pipe with a lid bolted on, not sure how deep it is. But will probably need a lot of bleach.
Very good tutorial! Thank you. I am new to well water systems. Been on city water for about fifty years now.
I think Lowes should be sponsoring your channel 😅
I'm glad to see you rinsed the casing after bleaching. Bleach will rust out casing and if you have a pitless adapter, good luck getting it apart in 10 years. Great video.
Tyler Hopaluk 👍
Wow! Thank you for this great video Pete!! Just had well deepened and tested positive for Coliform. Will be using your method. Getting tired already 😀
Glad it was helpful! 👍
Great video, THANK YOU!!! I am a new home-owner in michigan, new to well water so this is great info. My wife been freaking out about this kind of stuff.
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Great video, very informative. Keep up the good work!
Thank you 👍
If you have PEX tubing for your water lines inside your house, turn off your water heater and let it cool before chlorinating your well. They say PEX tubing will last 50 years, but exposure to hot, heavily chlorinated water can damage the tubing and may significantly shorten the life of the tubing. I haven't experienced or seen this, just something I read about using PEX tubing.
For people an alternative and better sanitize is peroxide.
@@truth6600 Thank you! Can you find this at feed stores or co-ops?
Thanks for the tip Allen!
Here in 2022. I am also on well water (and septic tank) for 35 years now & I have never heard of shocking wells before. I live in the Willamette Valley here in Oregon (Pacific Northwest). We don't have animal farmlands nearby, they are probably at least a couple miles away, probably even more like 5 or 10. Our water also has iron bacteria but probably not coliform. We use the well water only for washing dishes, hands & showers. We stopped using it for laundry maybe 2 decades ago, but I may restart that although only use it once a month on average for the laundry. However, for potable drinking & cooking, we buy bottled water & also bring in ~10 gallons or so of city tap water in empty gallon jugs every other week from our second home at another town an hour away to this home with well water. We have not tested our water in decades & we have never had whole-house filtration (we used to have one faucet filter long ago) & our water softener broke 2 decades ago, so yeah we have been using straight unfiltered well water for that long. It's been ok, we haven't gotten sick, we're trying to save money, but it does stain the toilets & stuff, but I clean the toilets & the faucet grills every once in a while. Anyway this is nice new information for me & it makes me wonder if this is necessary or unnecessary in my scenario/situation. I am planning to get a whole-house spin-down filter trap to catch sediment/sand which we also see that in our water, so that at least that does not bog down the septic tank of accumulated sand over time, which again now has been 35 years, so I have to wonder what the potential dwindling of space volume that our septic is at now due to sand, which hopefully is still ok too.
It's been a bit of time since the video was made but thankyou for the information.
Great video, best info I have watched on this subject .... Thank you!
thank you 👍
Life saver, English isn’t my first language and I understood so “well”😊 ready to disinfect my water as a pro. Thanks for your time.
You’re welcome 😊
Nice job with the wireless microphone so the audio is excellent. Also great job with the info.
Thank you
Great video, I'm in Canada so my well is a little bit different, but I can use your method just fine. Thanks
Great information I did not have an idea about water wheal but I will do that on my property on my cabin thanks .
Really great video, i did something similar years ago to my parents well pipe.
I might read up on the chlorinating the brine pellets.
My softeners manual says it degrades the pellet media.
Just an fyi.
Again. Great job.
Thanks, My water softener suggests to put a few ounces of bleach in the brine tank and do a backwash to disinfect the softener.
I definitely learned something in this video. Thanks for sharing.
Clear presentation. Good job!
Thanks , Great info ! I am also having the same problem in W. Colorado at my survival training tipi camp , 7,000 ft. in canyon .No cattle, no homes near , well 7--9 yrs old , seldom use water. Only for firec safety. Students bring bottled water. ( probably the problem. I should max flush a couple times a yr. no doubt. ) There are no openings in my system for critters, etc. My hand pump gives me crystal clear, but Lab says it is NOT. The elec pump gives me red , rusty water. I have been max flushing well 24 hrs a day ! I will try your idea. Thanks! Mtn Mel , Ret USN SERE/VN.
thanks for sharing I'm going to try it this way.
Very throughly explained. Thank you.
Great video. I would recommend adding the water to the bucket before the bleach so if it splashes up it's diluted
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It's actually more than that, you want add the bleach to water as to not have a high concentration that could cause vigorous exothermic reaction.
Do what you otter, add acid to water. Thank you HS chemistry.
Thank you best explanation out of all the videos!
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Thank you for the video very informative walkthrough
Thank you for that side note about bleach and septic tanks. Had no clue
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But don't you use bleach in your washing machine, and that goes in your septic tank ??
@@markkulyas2418 Many people don't use bleach in washing machine if they have well/septic. If I use bleach, it's very sparingly. Additionally, good practice is to use a dry well with dedicated drainage for washing machines. A bit difficult to retrofit because you likely need to run a dedicated vent stack depending on configuration, and many homes have washing machine drain tied into other drainage so it's impossible to isolate without major surgery.
@@michaelrossley3073
Naive here. Why is a new dedicated vent stack required ? I thought I could cut the laundry room drain, reroute it and cap the old drain and just leave the old vent stack in place to do its job. It’s not venting any other drain because the laundry room is isolated beside the garage. Am I missing something?
@@DonaldDump2024 hey sorry for way late reply here. You may run into a situation where your p trap (desired) becomes an S trap (not desired/vacuum). Essentially, if you just have washing machine running into what’s called a P trap at Home Depot, the water will flow through into the lower point in the p, but because there’s nothing to break the vacuum, will almost completely pull through the length of pipe to termination. If you’re only draining laundry into dedicated drywell, probably no big, but it’s also aok to use a “sure-vent” above.
What about the affect the bleach could have on the pressure tank bladder - which is made of rubber?
Septic tank question can you add a chemical like ridex back into your tank?
Nice well :) and yes, thank you for the info.
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Thanks Pete! The video was VERY helpful. And no b.s. either.
My well has a pump, and a person can climb down into the well, like 7 or 8 feet. Is it okay to just dump a few gallons of bleach water right into the well housing?
What if you have a underground storage tank with the well which is what I have. Is it the came process? Or do I have to put bleach in storage tank as well. I think it's a 2000 gal tank and my well is 500 feet deep. Thanks
Thank you! That was very informative.
Thanks so much. Very well done.
I did this to my well that smelled like rotten eggs...amazing transformation back to great water. thank you!
Great! The bleach will not only kill the bacteria but oxidize the iron, manganese and sulfur. It would be best to get a hydrogen peroxide injection system followed by an iron back washing filter tank. That's what I ended up doing and now I have perfect water. Here's some links to where I bought the system. www.cleanwaterstore.com/hydrogen-peroxide-well-water-systems/hydrogen-peroxide-proportional-flow-well-water-system-j-pro-22-110v-230v.html and the Pro-Ox 5900-BT iron filter which removes sulfur also. www.cleanwaterstore.com/pro-ox-iron-filters.html#item=FE012400&tab=tab1 Hope this helps.
that rotten egg smell might be from your hot water heater anode. IF your anode is used up the water will begin to smell bad.
@@TheJayDawgZ what's the anode... The temperature basically
@@rickynelson2217 The anode in a water heater is basically a chunk of Zinc that is screwed into the top of the tank by the manufacturer to keep the tank from rusting out. The anode is a sacrificial metal that gets dissolved instead of the tank. Most people are not aware of the anode and are not aware that it is a serviceable item.
Where is the anode located? Because I have the same problem.
I bought 2 new garden hoses, 2 gallons of unscented bleach & I am going to do this "re treat" my self, following your directions, then I will get a bottle from the place that tests water, and I will see what the water test will say. I will let you know when the test returns. Thanks!!
A10TOES There's coliform test kit that I use made by (LaMotte) coliform test kit that has 5 tests in the kit. I think I paid $15.00 online.
Thank You, I am having a local place check the water sample, I start flushing in about one hours, that will be bleach sitting in the well & pipe lines for 24 hrs. At least it is 37 degrees today here in Indiana, it was 31 when I put the bleach in & I about froze my tootsies off! LOL
A10TOES 😂👍
Great information and detailed procedure! My only question is: Now that we have meticulously and painstakingly sterilized and sanitized our entire well water system from end to end, exactly why are we re-installing scanky, old, contaminated used water filters back into our system?
I live in northern Washington state. We are on a well newly drilled within the last 3 years. Our well is roughy 480ft deep. How much chlorine/bleach should I use to shock my well?
Thank you for making this video brother, helped me tremendously!
Awesome 👍
Thank you so much for this video I needed it
Any cast iron pipes can also add iron to your water also cat iron pipes can rust closed where you can lose water pressure. If it's before the gauge your pump works harder if it's after the gauge you won't have any water pressure in the house
Wow that was great
A lot of maintenance & up keep
if you got a filter at the pump house why remove house screens does this means your piping is compromised /old p.s the only way to flush hot water tank is to drain it all out ?not just run water thru it
Great video...well done
Hi all,
I have a new well and the water is slightly salted. Is there a way to fix this? Thanks
Not all bleach is the same. They now sell types with very little chlorine. Read the back and look for the info on disinfecting. Great Vid!
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Hi thank you so much for your video do i have to bypass the bladder tank for this ??
Hi, no you don't have to bypass the pressure tank.
Great post, thanks.
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We are almost ready to close on our new home and it has a well. Water smells like sulfur. Will shocking it get rid of that?
Wow. In Texas your pressure tank can be outside. Guess I've been living in the north country too long.
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My concern that it turns commode light orange n dark orange in some places. I sits in white plastic bowl overnight turns bowl iron orange
What do you suggest with water in the washing machine?
Anything special to do for electric water heater?
Great job !
Thank you
Really appreciate all the care and info you put into this video! I'm not sure what's going on with my well yet, just want to be prepared and glad I came across your video.
My water was left off for about a month and lines drained (living elsewhere and winterized the lines to not freeze). Now the water gets a weird webby looking growth in it when left to stand over night in the sink. I'll be taking a sample to get tested, and don't really know if I'll be able to get this process done if I need to, but need to do something!... Freezing temps don't make it nice.
Any recommendations?
Thanks again!
Get your water tested and find out what's in it. Then shock your well and that should take care of most anything that's in your water especially iron bacteria. I purchased a back washing water filter from the cleanwaterstore.com and it's solved all my water problems. You can contact them and they will let you know exactly what the type of backwashing filter you need.
This is the filter I purchased it's for iron and manganese. www.cleanwaterstore.com/iron-and-manganese-filters-for-well-water.html
Thank you!! Really appreciate it!!!
For some reason Bleach is still in my well. Been running pressure tank garden hose outside for 3 hours. I put 1 gallon of Disinfecting bleach in well last night. It’s 7in casing 475 feet down. Water level at 50 feet or so. Going to keep well going for now. Hopefully Clears up soon. I’ve got 50-70 psi 13 gallons a minute.
The chlorine will dissipate soon down in the well.
Can you use the shock made for pools?
Great video 👍
Thank you
It is amazing
Thanks Pete!
Could this be done to a shallow well about 30ft deep? 3" casing. Just circulate the well without sending it into the house? Do I let it sit for 24hrs before I begin to flush the well?
Here's a link that shows how to disinfect both shallow and deep wells: www.skillingsandsons.com/how-to-chlorinate-your-well
I believe I'll do something a bit different. ie put a drain pipe with a shut off just before the septic tank. Allow all the bleach water to flow out there until it's clean. I'm old and carrying all those 5 gallon buckets around seems a bit much. Think Jandy diverter valve.
I am taking out my old charcoal filter unit and softner and putting in a new system. should I leave the old units intact while bleaching then replace them?
You should never let the bleach water go through the carbon block type filters, always try to bypass them.
Great job
Thank you
How far away from your well are the surrounding properties with livestock? We have a couple of small cattle ranchers about 3000' feet east of our well and nothing but a national park north and west and forest south of us. Npt sure if that puts us in the clear from contamination.
We have a neighbor about 300 feet from our well with 20 cows and a bull. But the problem is that our property where the well is, is slightly lower then our neighbors and when we get a good rain we get the run off from his place :(
@@petebeasttexashomesteading I believe the deeper the well the safer you are generally.
Should mention unscented bleach at beginning alot of people dont watch whole video but great info
He did
thank you
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Doing this now hope help with the rusty water
This is only good for disinfecting the well water (killing bacteria). You would need a back washing iron filter to remove the iron (rust). Here is the link to the filter I use. www.cleanwaterstore.com/pro-ox-5900-air-iron-filters.html
Great Video. Please can I use HTH Chlorine to disinfect or shock my well and the entire hose too? Also from your iron removal video, can i dose the 35% food grade hydrogen peroxide without necessarily diluting it?
Thank you.
No! you can not use pool tablets for this and they take too long to break down. It would be cheaper and faster to just use regular unscented bleach.
Thank you.
thought for sure you were going to spill.......... w the funnel........ well done!
Great info
Thank you
Thank you for the great info.
+ Question: I have purchased a house cross country. I won't be able to move in for a year. Should I do this when I visit or should I just wait till next year. Granted I will only visit once till I move next year. Hope this makes sense and any advice would be appreciated. 👍
I would wait until you move in. You can use the water when you visit to wash with but not to drink.
@@petebeasttexashomesteading cool! Thank you for the info👍👍
Great video
Thank you 👍
How much bleach do I need for 350 ft deep on a 2 inch well?
You might want to check out dechlorinators instead of draining your toilet tanks. They sell them to aquarium and pond owners. A few drops in your tank is all it would take. I use a cap full to dechlorinate a 55 gallon garbage can full of water for my backyard nature pond. Supposedly just letting the water sit for a day or two will cause the chlorine to evaporate, but that pertains to normal chlorinated tap water and I am not sure how effective that would be for the high concentration you use. Your charcoal filter also does the job. I hear that pool chlorine (12%) is better due to lack of additives used in laundry bleach. There's more in that stuff than just scent. A friend of mine has a pool cleaning business and he told me that years ago which made me want to comment just to share that tidbit. It might be more expensive, but you are fastidious in your work and it seems to be something you would want to investigate. Love your channel by the way. I am always happy to see new content from you. You have a nice presentation style that is very appealing to regular guys who just want to learn something in a relaxing and informal manner. Stormy Sounds is right about your potential, but YT is full of click bait which makes it hard to compete. I would love for you to take us on a tour of your property and share your long term plans. I find it very interesting. I also like hearing about and learning from your past experience in the tool trade. Your drill sharpening video was fantastic. It is great to learn from a person with years of experience in any field. Thank you for your hard work!
Thank you, I'll do some research on the pool chlorine, plus it might be more effective. Yes UA-cam is getting very big and like you said hard to compete but I'll just keep at it. I might do a video of my property and why we moved out here but we will see :) I'm glad you like my videos. My early videos are not that great but country living is all new to me, but I would never go back to living in the rat race I lived in before. Thank you again for your kind words, I really appreciate it.
@@petebeasttexashomesteading Howdy neighbor. So first off bleach has a shelf life, older stuff will permeate (think off gassing) thru the container and become just water after a long enough period of time. So you cannot store bleach for more than about 6 months. Granulated pool shock is shelf stable for years. Also cheaper by volume than bleach. However not all pool shocks are created equal. You need to find Calcium hypochlorite, which is available in any pool section including Wally world.
RE: getting rid of chlorine; standard city water has .02 PPM of chlorine in the pipes when it's delivered to you to keep the pipes sanitized. A pool that smells just a little of chlorine will have about 5 ppm. The ways to get rid of chlorine are thru electrolysis, heat, uv exposure, oxidization or permeation. So you can just set a bucket (preferably clear) and the heat/uv/oxidization/permeation will remove the chlorine, you can speed it up by dumping it between buckets or increasing the surface area.
RE: pool chlorine, its not usually 12%, thats very low. Typical pool shock is 65% available chlorine. however that's 35% other disolvable solids. Shock typically is available in 1lb containers. So dissolve about 1/4lb in each 5 gallon bucket and youll have very strong bleach.
Im impressed with your water pressure. You must have a good pump huh?
Jack Mehoff I'm not sure what HP the pump is but it pumps the water 475 ft to my house and up 20 ft of incline.
Yeah, it looks like they knew what they were doing when they put it in.
Got to be 30 to 40 lb of water pressure in that hose.
Many thanks. Is it a regular bleach or bleach specially prepared for disinfecting drinking water (food grade bleach) I mean should I distinguish between the two or just ignore and use any household bleach (used for cleaning)?
You should use regular house hold bleach and nothing scented.
According to the pros I had come out today, you are using way too much bleach. They only used 1 cup of bleach for my system (in TX, 4" pipe, 220ft well). I asked why not use a couple gallons and they said if you use that much, it will keep coming back. If you use just a little, it somehow prevents the smell from coming back almost indefinitely. Who knows....?? Just figured I would share. They just finished so if I think about it, I will jump back on and comment on results several months from now.
Well?
Hi,
I have an old dug well with a rotting wooden cover. When I bought my house seven months ago, I had a well company come shock it because it tested positive for coliform because the house had been vacant for four years and the water just sitting there. They poured a mason jar of bleach directly into it. There was no diluting it in a bucket of water.
I need to shock it again because I’m now having iron bacteria issues. Everything I see online says to use like two gallons of bleach. I don’t know if that’s too much. The well guy only used like a cup or two.
It’s a dug well, so it’s probably shallow. And the casing is manhole sized. I’m not sure what to do. I may just call another well company and have them take care of it so I don’t screw something up. I also need to get a new cover fitted for it.
My water smells so bad. We’ve had tons of rain up here in NY this summer. My neighbors have a drilled well and had stench water also and a company tested it and confirmed it was too much iron. They got an extremely expensive treatment system installed. I can’t afford something like that currently.
I would put the same amount of bleach as they did because you have a shallow well and not it a deep drilled well. Also if you do drink the water, I would put a point of use faucet on your sink with a two stage filter under the sink. First filter a carbon block type 5 micron and the second filter a ceramic one under the sink. Ceramic filters will filter all bacteria from the water. Hope this helps.
What mic is that? Excellent sound!
I'm using the Comica WM 100-TX
from where I'm setting, you are missing a lot of well casing with the bleach mixture and it is not getting sanitized..JMO
I know but I can only pour it through a small hole at the top of the casing.
Good point. His well head water level is 100 feet down so if he had a 100’ hose with a circular spray nozzle at the end he could drop it down and spray the sides, that would be ideal. Then he would have to rinse it with clean water to stop chlorine corrosion. I could see handling 20’ of hose but 100’? Tough problem. That’s a lot of hose to keep clean otherwise you re-contaminate your well head and defeat the purpose.
What prevents the iron bacteria from coming back
Pete: You did a good job on how to disinfect your well. Do you have a well log for your well? If so could you send me a copy of it. I am interested in seeing what they drilled through. Thanks, Chuck
Thanks, I don't have a well log. The well was drilled before I purchased the property. All I know is the well is 300ft deep and the well pump is 180ft deep and the water table is 99ft down and It's high in iron.
Pete: I think if you went to this web site you maybe able to find the well log. www.tceq.texas.gov/drinkingwater/SWAP/wells.html The reason I would like to look at it to see what kind of ground, clay, sand, gravel, bedrock if the case was grouted 20feet down. was it a drilled well or was a cable rig used. Was it just Coliform present and was E.coli present. Maybe you may find out who the driller was. This sounds like an interesting case. If you find the well log please let me know. I may have a few Ideas.
Charles Weihe I’m curious, what are the ideas. Maybe you could give a few brief scenarios.