My Well Water is Bad & the Well is Going Dry - Help!

I received a call last week from a person that was in a panic about their well water. They have a lot of hardness in the water, but have another problem - many wells in the area are going dry. They've noticed that running water constantly for an hour or more depletes the well and are concerned about the trend in the area.

The water is so hard, they have to replace their fixtures about every two years. They have made arrangements for a trickle system to be installed (this is a set up where city water from a nearby municipality is delivered at low pressure and flow rate into an atmospheric holding tank at the property, from which the water is then pressurized and delivered much the way someone with a cistern's is.) The problem is, that water is at least a year away, and when it comes, it still will be hard water, and will have the added problem of chlorine. What to do, what to do???

We visted the gentleman on Tuesday afternoon and tested the water. Sure enough - its very hard water. There wasn't much for iron or other contaminants, but there was a fair amount of sediment coming thru. This made the diagnosis rather simple - a Hague Watermax water conditioner.

The system recommended for this gentleman will filter out sediment down to 20 microns (smaller than the eye can see) for the whole home using a built-in "Ultra-Fil" module - whole-house dirt and sediment filter that never needs replacement filters or maintenance; it cleans itself automatically each time the conditioner regenerates - slick, eh?

Using Hague's patented "Zero Soft" approach, all hardness will be completely removed by the fine mesh resin, and "Bacteriostat" inhibits growth in the resin bed, keeping the Watermax fresh and clean for the life of the appliance.

Next year, when they migrate from their well water to a city water supply, "Chlorostat" is added to completely remove the clorine, and activated coconut shell carbon will be installed into the empty media chamber to remove organics and disinfection byproducts - an unwanted result of the chlorination system that has been linked to cancer.

The nice thing about working with the Hague line-up is the flexibility. With this system, when water conditions or even water supplies change, there's a good change Watermax can change with you. Two days after the initial visit, he had spoken with the other water companies in the area (I was the first one to come out) and liked what he saw with Hague. We're welcoming him to the Hague family next Friday when his system is going in!

Cisterns: But I Have City Water, Right?

I was doing a routine reverse osmosis maintenance yesterday for a client of mine in Strathcona County. Anyway, they do a lot of water testing for this facility as they rent this particular hall out for parties, weddings and other group gatherings. They were having problems passing the microbiological tests because the water in their cistern (for those not familiar with this concept, if you don't have municipal water piped into your home and you don't have a well, the alternative is to have a buried storage tank that gets filled by delivery trucks filled with city water to run your property) kept showing bacteria.

The client had been performing regular cleanings (something most cistern owners rarely do) and they have spent a LOT of money sealing the cistern so leaves, dirt, bugs, mice, etc don't find their way in. Despite these steps, the tests kept coming back FAIL... Douglas Environmental Solutions was called in a little over a year ago to make recommendations.

The client initially was inquiring about ultraviolet (UV) sterilization to take care of this. Sounds good, but there are certain water quality requirements that must be met for that to work. The water must be:

- filtered to finer than 5 microns - sediment creates shadows and places for bacteria to "hide"
-there cannot be any colour, turbidity, iron, H2S or manganese present. (This is normally not a problem with city water supplies.)
- less than 7 grains hard (Edmonton/Sherwood Park water is HARD, between 9 and 12 grains, so that won't work)
- there must be minimal "turbidity" (basically a murkiness in the water) that prevents light from passing through and can inhibit UV's effectiveness at killing germs.

Needless to say, since raw city water doesn't meet these requirements, if they wanted UV, they'd need to filter and soften the water. Because of particular installation confinements at this facility (its so incredibly tight) we opted instead to create a potable water supply using reverse osmosis. This treatment would filter, soften and clean up the water effectively removing bacteria from the supply.

As added protection, we incorporated a UV sterilization chamber for the product water - just in case something physically happened to the RO system, the UV would still be there as back up and sterilize any germs.

The system has been operating for over a year now and even though the cistern is continually cleaned and the seal on the cistern rivals the one my grandma used when she made jelly, "stuff" is still getting into the tank.

How do I know? When we change the filter, you can see all the organics that are trapped by the prefilter. When new, these filters are pristine and white. The post filters (final stage of filtration before the water goes to the faucet) still look nice and white - although when wet, you can see the black carbon behind it, kind of like when you get a t-shirt wet - but that's another story...

Anyway, we've had to cut the filter change time in half for this facility and we're still getting a great deal of staining on the pre-filter. That's what its there for though - you can see by the post-filter the organics are not making it through the system.

We employ Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) Monitoring at this location as well. TDS is a measure of purity of the water. A meter reads impurities in the water and gives a number. The closer to zero the number, the better the water. When we installed the system last year, we were getting ZERO TDS water; indicative of very high quality. A year later, the meter still reads ZERO. The system is still doing its job - despite all the 'stuff' in the cistern.

I literally cringe when I hear people telling me they can drink water from their cistern because its "pure city water." Those people have, I guarantee you, either not cleaned their cistern, or not WATCHED the cistern getting cleaned. What comes out of there is enough to make you sick - just by looking at it. Its not uncommon to see frogs, mice and all kinds of organic material just decaying in there. That is running into your home and out the tap - unless you take measures like our clients!