We are cleaning out my parent’s house in preparation to sell it. It has a shallow well and the water has a terrible sulfur smell. What do I need to install on the system to remove the sulfur smell? Thank you!
Bleach the well, maybe even twice depending on how bad. I've done mine twice. It works and is the price of a bottle of bleach or two.
With Jack planning on selling it 37 he could be in for some court action down the road from the new owners.
Why? This is what you do. Recommended by my well guy. You run the bleach out of the system once it does it's thing in the pipes. The sulfur smell is in the pipes, this is proven and safe.
We use bleach. Just plan on washing a bunch of cars the day you flush the well. It doesn’t last long but it helps
Bleach is an oxidizer. It will only oxidize a small amount of sulfur then needs to be filtered out with carbon to neutralize. Injecting air might be just as effective as chlorine... Looks like hydrogen peroxide is probably the best method for really high levels of sulfur.
When we bought the house the agent asked the owner in front of the 4 of us if he had 'Shocked' the well with in the last few weeks? Asked her afterwards what was up? and she filled us in about people tampering with their wells before the sign went up and were taken to court when the well quickly went bad after the final sale. I play with chlorine everyday at work and doesnt bother me a bit.
I can see how nowadays “people” could get incensed over a bleach/chlorine smell from well water and it end up in court. The older can do generation just deals with it. I just moved into my parents house a year ago which has a minor sulfur smell to the water. My old place had the best water I’ve ever tasted . Even in the old place on several occasions the water would get an off taste and I’d shock the well.
My house had a sulphur smell develop about a year after I bought it. I dont even notice it, but it drives my wife nuts. Granted, I work with, and sell batteries for a living, so minuscule sulphur smells are not even noticable to me. We use a small inline carbon filter where the water comes in the house from the well to combat it. I need to shock the well and see if it helps.
We have a Kinetico sulfur guard filter. Automatically regenerating no salt or chemicals and I haven't even looked at it in 11 years.
Iron sulfide- red slime - pia just about have to shockwell 2 times year plus run carbon filters. funny thing is the city water that I was forced to hook up to isn't any better.
Sounds like they have some pizz poor water treatment then...unless its just a fairly new/temporary thing that they just haven't got a handle on yet...
Well it definitely could use some chlorine through the system. I’ll start there. Thank you for all of the replies.
When we bought our property there were 2 wells. A state water inspection checked both. Ours was fine but the trailer had a bacteria in it which is not harmful to us. But to be safe he had us put bleach in the well and after awhile just hook up a hose and run it for a while to clear it out.
Shocking a well with bleach is pretty common. Now, my mom bleach shocked the cabin's well, and she used so much that the bleach smell lasted for weeks. No cars were washed, but probably should have been to clear that smell out. I think she did that in late fall or some non car wash friendly weather.
There's a 40ft well on the lot next door that we don't use and every few years I drop about a half gallon of the stuff in just for snickers. Been lucky for the last 20 years as its common for salt or running dry out here. Now watch my well go for a chit as I just wrote this.
