Sediment/grit in well water.

This seems to be a reasonable place to put this.

We have well water. It's been fine for the 40+ years of ownership. It's drilled to 120ft, with the pump at 105ft. I suspect the well was drilled ~90 years ago. We have no filters on the system.

A few years ago we noticed grit in the water. We had the pump raised up 5ft from 110ft to 105ft deep. This seemed to have resolved the grit issue until now.

The grit is fine, like beachside. It's getting through various in-line screens. Such as used by a washing machine and faucets/shower heads.

I'm exploring options. I think I'll be putting in a sediment filter, either cartridge, backwash, or combination.

I'll also be getting in touch with the well guy to get his opinion. I suppose it's not out of reason that the well casing is deteriorating.

Thoughts?

 

Also check the sediment in your hot water heater, especially if you have hard water.

 

Yep - I'll be draining some water out of there shortly and see what we get for grit.

 

It's not unheard of for sediment to backfill into the well casing over time.

"A few years ago we noticed grit in the water. We had the pump raised up 5ft from 110ft to 105ft deep. This seemed to have resolved the grit issue until now."

I'm thinking you'll have to do this again if you can get away with it. The Well guy would know if there's another way to get around this.

 

Put in a sediment filter and change the cartridge every few months or as needed. My old house had one and the house here does too.

 

I change our filter once a month. The hot water tank gets flushed yearly.

 

Well water at both places and sediment filters at each. At our main house, I change it every three months. We’ve been fortunate lately as there isn’t much sediment in the filter; it’s mostly orange and trapping the iron bits.

Make sure you get a regular ol’ pleated filter. The ones that filter out everything fill up very quickly and cause issues with the water pressure.

We had a plumber do the install of the actual units. Changing the filters is pretty easy. One thing to remember is they don’t have to be tightened very much. I get it seated, then snug it down. If they get tightened too much, they are a bear to remove. I always shut off both valves, bleed the pressure, then start to remove.

 

I came across this.



I'll be meeting with a plumber next week.

Thanks for all the info!

 

I got a well MikeInMa use 3/4 or 1 inch lines
Put shut offs on both sides of all!!
All fail eventually

I have filter then softener
Softener just died at 16 years old

I even put filters in apartment buildings as whenever they fix city lines sediments cause toilets to oeak

 

That’s a good company and Jerry, pictured, is a nice guy.

So if the grit is black and not accompanied with muddy water then it is likely what they call well scale. Corrosion from the casing and/or the drop pipe if it’s iron flaking off. For such a shallow well I would use PE pipe but that’s a regional thing and you may have galvanized iron. It’s summer and if you’re irrigating you may be sucking pretty hard on a low aquifer and pulling silt into the well. Do you ever run this well dry?

Silt, sediment, scale, and grit are easy to remove. Luckily. Jerry can sell you the stuff.

 

Make sure the O ring is seated correctly when you screw it back on or you get a face full of water

Ask me how i know this.

 

No irrigation.
Never ran dry.
3-4 loads of laundry per week
2 people - regular daily use.
Water is clear.
The grit is fine sand. No flakes.

Given it's age, I suspect it's a steel casing.

There's a pond nearby(downhill from us) that I'm guessing could be part of the aquifer.

Thanks for the input!

 

Too bad they couldn’t do this for you.

 

A very good point! I’ve been there too! I usually apply a little plumbers silicone to the o-ring so it stays in the channel of housing when installing.

 

You could verify with the well logs but you might just be pulling in the sand from around the well screen at the bottom. Your demands on the well are not excessive. Since it’s fine sand and not milky silt it’s relatively large rocks and easier to filter out than cloudy silt.

You’ll have some choices as far as using a cartridge filter or a backwashing filter that flows better. If the sand is minor in volume I think I would use a big cartridge filter at least to start. They’re cheaper, easier to install, no electricity, and could last a long time if the sand load is small.

Important information is that the sand is gritty between your fingers and the water is not cloudy. That will help you select the right micron size for your filter.

 

You might just need a simple whole house filter cartridge type filter for sand/grit/silt, although silt can be very small, that you change every three months or so.

I have rust/iron (can be typical in New England rock, often minor) but a galvanized pipe was accidentally dropped down in the early sixties and may be contributing to the increase in rust along with an older well casing. We may have to add a 5 micron whole house after the current 10/20 micron currently in use. ( I tried a 5 micron once and it blocked up far too fast) . I can taste the rust and use a water pitcher filter which works well enough at least for now.

 

Dissolved iron that you can taste/smell/stains toilets is also easy to remove but a different process than just sediment. The iron oxidation and removal equipment often has a really tight micron rating so it acts like a huge grit filter as well. You could replace your cartridge filters with a single backwashing iron filter that gets it all.

 

There's a little bit of a price difference.

 

Going from a cartridge sediment filter to a backwashing iron filter, yes, more bucks. A little grit is cheap to remove.