From the Forum: Help With Water Filtration Systems
Over in the Forum, a reader needs some help.
“I just bought a house with a water filteration system that I am clueless about. Also, the water currently stinks. Does anyone know of any good resources I can read or now a good contact in Ulster county?”
Ask and answer your upstate New York-related questions in the Forum.
We had a filtration system in stalled by Leighton’s Water Treatment in Saugerties. It cured what my lovely son called “Ass Water”.
http://www.leightonenterprises.com/
We had a problem with smelly water (sulphur/rotten egg smell) occasionally the first year in our house. It was definitely worse when we would come back from being away. We read that it could be from the anti-corrosion rods in the hot water heater reacting with the water and creating sulphur dioxide which is harmless, but unpleasant. We started draining a few gallons of water from our hot water heater, which helped, and it went away entirely when we replaced the water heater this fall.
Depending on where you are, your water itself is probably pretty clean (most of the western part of the Catskills/upstate is watershed area which supplies all of NYC water, so the city is pretty strict on keeping things out of the water supply.) It might just be an issue with your water heater, with your well or with the filter itself. Have you tried bypassing the filter and seeing if you get the same smell?
Two things we did: First because of floods in the area, we got our water tested using an online service http://www.watertestamerica.com/. We got the $169 test which is a very comprehensive test for all sorts of nasty things in our water bacterial as well as chemical.
Second, because we had grit in our water that was messing up our appliances and toilets, we got a sediment filter installed. This only removes grit, sand and sediment, but doesn’t do any other sort of filtering.
I would get your water tested first, by an independent company. Supposedly the county extension office does this for free, but supposedly any bad results are recorded and can affect a sale of a house in the future. Also, contact the company that makes the filter system that you have (if you can find them) and see if they can recommend someone. You might also think about calling someone who deals with wells – not necessarily the filter companies since their job is to just sell you more filters.
The testing company also said that we could bleach shock our well if we were still having problems – which thankfully we aren’t since it sounds pretty nasty.
http://inspectapedia.com/water/Well_Shock_Procedure.htm