contaminated well...

hey folks, got a water test done last week and the well is "heavily contaminated" with coliform and e-coli. DOnt' know how much as I have not received the test analysis breakdown yet.. just the recorded message telling me I should not be drinking it.

I am new to wells. We moved here in the spring. Always had city water. I made a mistake by not taking care of a UV light problem. The health unit said that is the most important piece of equipment. Last June I replaced the bulb but after i plugged in the unit again there was a constant beep indicating a problem. Anyhow, at that time I shocked the well with bleach as per instructions... Some of you might recall my posts from last spring where I complained about the sulphur smell.. this is why i shocked it and it worked at the time. The smell went away.

Anyhow, I did not do anything after that. The UV was just unplugged and I left the system as is.. My wife drinks bottled water 100% of the time and I often do myself as we aren't crazy about the taste of well water. But our baby did drink it often. I wish I didn't give her tap water. Mistake... She's fine though and has never shown symptoms. The problem is, brushing teeth, washing food, etc... puts us at risk. We have stopped using it altogether except to bathe and even that we are doing carefully.

I contacted Water Depot as they are the ones who installed the current filter/uv system (i also changed out the filters last june) and the tech guy thinks it's the ballast that is toast. So, $200 replacement is apparently going to fix this.. I just don't trust these companies as I have heard horror stories about them selling people stuff they don't need. He claimed that the UV is vital to the purification and that the ballast is the "heart of the system". Clearly I don't know anything about this technical stuff, so I have to trust him.

Does this make sense? Is the ballast the problem? What else can we do? I will be shocking the well again and perhaps throwing a chlorine puck down there (it's drilled BTW). We will have it tested again this week after the Water Depot gets the ballast in stock as they didn't have it on Friday. Also, my neighbour will test his water tomorrow to compare.


Thoughts? thanks...

A lot of wells in "cattle farm country" are susceptible to contamination over time as large amounts of manure break down and leech into the water table….no way around that, just the way it works. I've been on well water for about 20yrs and had some issues. The UV ballast does have a life span (I believe my last one was 4 yrs) so it will need replacing. You did not mention that you had a filter b4 the UV…this is a must….EColi etc etc can hide behind large particles suspended in the water and as it passes through the UV it will NOT be "killed"…we used a "20" big blue 5 micron" filter from that the water line went into the UV. If water taste is a problem you can always try a charcoal filter at the end of the system….Do you use a water softener as well to take out heavy metals?????? For now the "bleach shock" is a good start and I hope your service people are ethical and don't try to soak ya(no pun intended) best of luck to the family, clean safe water is a must.

I started out on well water then moved to town, back to country, back to town, etc. Some wells taste great, others taste worse than GTA treated water. I won't spend my money on bottled water....
Your daughter will probably be one of those people who can travel the country and drink the water anywhere with no problems while her parents spend their time on the throne. During my life I have probably taken a drink from most lakes I have fished or any streams I have waded.

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Originally Posted by Plog

A lot of wells in "cattle farm country" are susceptible to contamination over time as large amounts of manure break down and leech into the water table….no way around that, just the way it works. I've been on well water for about 20yrs and had some issues. The UV ballast does have a life span (I believe my last one was 4 yrs) so it will need replacing. You did not mention that you had a filter b4 the UV…this is a must….EColi etc etc can hide behind large particles suspended in the water and as it passes through the UV it will NOT be "killed"…we used a "20" big blue 5 micron" filter from that the water line went into the UV. If water taste is a problem you can always try a charcoal filter at the end of the system….Do you use a water softener as well to take out heavy metals?????? For now the "bleach shock" is a good start and I hope your service people are ethical and don't try to soak ya(no pun intended) best of luck to the family, clean safe water is a must.

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Yes, i got those blue filters that filter before going through UV. Ballast last only 4 years? Geez that sucks... they're 200. Thought I was going to be saving money by not having to pay for city water... between the hydro used to pump it and all this other stuff, it's not free!

Anyhow, thanks for the input.

This is something that you have to take seriously, "Coliform bacteria can make you sick , however some strains of E-COLI bacteria are DEADLY ! , remember what happened in Walkerton.

Sep 9, 2014 - Some strains of E. coli bacteria (such as a strain called O157:H7) may also cause severe anemia or kidney failure, which can lead to death. Other strains of E. coli can cause urinary tract infections or other infections

Coliform bacteria are a commonly used bacterial indicator of sanitary quality of foods and water. They are defined as rod-shaped Gram-negative non-spore forming and motile or non-motile bacteria which can ferment lactose with the production of acid and gas when incubated at 35–37°C.^[1] Coliforms can be found in the aquatic environment, in soil and on vegetation; they are universally present in large numbers in the feces of warm-blooded animals. While coliforms themselves are not normally causes of serious illness, they are easy to culture, and their presence is used to indicate that other pathogenic organisms of fecal origin may be present. Such pathogens include disease-causing bacteria, viruses, or protozoa and many multicellular parasites. Coliform procedures are performed in aerobic or anaerobic conditions.

if you have UV intensity sensor on your filter and it faulty, this could be the issue. Also check the quartz tube around your Lamp this may be dirty and restricting the UV transmittance, this would give you a UV intensity alarm via the sensor. you can check the lamp itself (BUT NOT WITH THE NAKED EYE OR YOU WILl BURN YOUR RETINAS) use a good pair of UV resistant sunglasses and a welding mask to ensure the lamp is lit.

The E-Coli could be coming from your septic tank if you have one - sometimes the pipes get crushed and the output of the tank never gets to the leach field - I had that problem at one time years ago - the pipe got crushed after ground settled around the tank - the other thing I did was get a reverse osmosis system put under my kitchen sink - it suppose to remove 99% of impurities including heavy metals from the water - fixing the septic system pipes did away with the E-coli problem -

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Originally Posted by JoePa

The E-Coli could be coming from your septic tank if you have one - sometimes the pipes get crushed and the output of the tank never gets to the leach field - I had that problem at one time years ago - the pipe got crushed after ground settled around the tank - the other thing I did was get a reverse osmosis system put under my kitchen sink - it suppose to remove 99% of impurities including heavy metals from the water - fixing the septic system pipes did away with the E-coli problem -

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We;ve yet to pump our tank. It was pumped a couple of years ago so it would have been premature to do so lat summer.. However, we might do it now since we are concerned. Tanks were installed here in '86. Previous owners maintained it as far as we know. Our current neighbour knew the previous owner well and confirmed when it was pumped. We'll see. But I still think this is coming from farming ops in the region. We have a cattle farm about a mile away..

If its from a neighborhood farm your neighbors should also have problems especially if their wells are near the same depth as yours - the way I was able to find the crushed pipe was when I had the tank pumped we saw the end of the pipe sticking into the septic tank was crushed - it was the pipe coming from the discharge end of the tank - I dug down to the pipe and sure enough about a two foot section of the pipe was crushed and blocked - the out flow from the septic tank was just going into the ground next to the tank -

What happened was when they dug the hole for the tank there was extra room around the tank - then when they backfilled after putting in the tank in time the dirt under the pipe settled and it left the pipe without any support under it - in time the weight of the ground on top of it crushed the pipe

I don't know how deep your well is but having surface water contaminate a well doesn't sound to likely to me - usually a well is drilled into the bed rock and a metal pipe put into the rock so that surface water can't get into the well - you should be drawing water from a source that is clean - I guess it could happen but I don't know how likely -

try shock chlorination and check your septic system. By law it should be 800 feet from your well. Other wise I have used well water for the past 20 years check it all the time but so far no problems. If your well is contaminated then usually the entire aquifer is done so check with your local health authority.