Another ugly run in with tap water

A year ago I moved into this nice house where everything above the foundation was built new, plus new works - well water conditioning system, pump system, and hot water heater. For sake of argument, I'm referring to the tap in the kitchen, or what some know as a fawcett, other people only think of it as tap water if the house is tapped into municipal water. Etiher way, it runs through some house plumbing, often copper, and comes out wherever a fawcett has been installed, kitchen, bathroom, basement, etc.

The only problem noticed at movein was the rotten egg smell coming from the water, especially the hot water. I did not do or say anything about this then assuming this was just the nature of the local well water that everybody in this small town has. About 3 months ago, I woke up one day to brown water coming out of the fawcetts. In the proces of trying to diagnose this the heating element in the hot water tank got zapped just at the point that I pinpointed an additional problem - black water coming out of the hot water tank after most of the hot water has been run out and used. In the interim, the two special guys from the company that installed the conditioning system made a visit and did some "things" to improve some of the problems I described. The description of "smell" immediately caused them to say that is generally an indicator of sulfur and the water running black is a confirmation of this. It then took about 3 weeks to get the special guy to come and fix the hot water heater, after which I let it go for a while since the odor was gone and the water color was not too bad. I have not, do not and will not drink the water that comes out of these fawcetts. I would not bathe in it either if I could find a simple solution to that.

This is sort of how some life problems can be; you can choose to accept them as a constant low level problem OR possibly flirt with turning it into a much bigger problem in the course of trying to make the entire problem go away..... :(

A few nights ago I did a sitz bath, which required running plenty of hot water out of the hot water tank, no odors, color not too bad, life was good. The following evening I tried the MH method of drinking hot lemonade tea while taking a hot soakign bath, which required me to once again run pleny of hot water out of the hot water tank. First load - okay, but then I drained some of the water after it cooled and ran some more hot - it began to come out black. This immediately reminded me of one of those life problems for which I had recently decided to let go as is for now, so I revised this decision to once again go back on the detective trail to diagnosing black water. I had a pretty good clue where to start. The hot water tank.

Today I shut off electricity to the hot water tank then drained all the water from it, then spent considerable time flushing the tank in hopes of being able to get the tank to finally run clear. To this point it was not draining clear, it was draining with lots of black in it and occasional chunks of black stuff. When one has well water with a pump system, as water is used the pressure in the pump system tank goes down eventually causing the pump to kick on and generate more pressure and eventualy the pump kicks off. There is a pressure gauge on the pump system that indicates the relative pressure when the starts and stops, AKA cuton and cutoff. This is controlled by a gizmo called Water Pump Pressure Switch. Since I was waiting for the tank to drain a little more so I could again flush it a little more, I decided to adjust the two nuts on the Water Pump Pressure Switch so that I would have better (higher) water pressure. This then turned into about an extra 3 hour ordeal trying to figure out and fine tune how these two nuts work in cooperation with each other. This added a lot more draining and flushing time to the effort of flushing the hot water tank. At the end of this three hours, I'd finally gotten the pressure switch adjusted to my liking AND the hot water tank finally began to drain clear. WoooHooo!

I go up to the kitchen and turn on the fawcett. A lot of air came out, which is to be expected after having drained parts of the plumbing. This air then proceeded to kick out various blasts of really ugly looking water, some of it brown, some of it black, some of it a color I have yet to identify. Eventually it began to run clear.... at least, clear to my naked eyes..... Heaven only knows what might be found in this or any other running water should I flirt with putting it under a microscope.... another thing about life problems, DO NOT put any of them under a microscope if you are not prepared to confront and acknowledge the facts that result :) In the back of my mind, I could not help wondering what happens to other people with similar water situations if/when those other people do not happen to spend as much time observing their water conditions as I do? My guess is, some of those people end up bathing in or drinking such water without ever noticing right away. Oh, they may eventually notice something, like hardened arteries, or Altzheimers, or Parkinsons....and they may even be able to figure out a way to correctly associate it to their water supply..... maybe. I went up stairs and ran the fawcetts up there. Similar air and various colored gunk came out. The entire house system now and finally seems to be back to a happy state of a-okay.... but for how long? I've become convinced man was not designed to use water that comes out of a pipe, be it a copper pipe, or plastic pipe or lead pipe or any kind of artificial pipe, be it well water or municipal water. Tweet