well water, sulfur smell (2025 Update)

Have you tried pouring Clorox down the well? Start with a cub full and if the smell is still there pour 2 cups down the well and keep increasing the amount until the smell goes away. Now you have the right amount to add each time the smell comes back, or you can just add a chlorinator to your system.

BTW, there are some underground water supplies in the Southeast across to the Southwest that have high sulfur content and filters are the only thing that is a cure.

Tom J

Remove the anode rod from your water heater.

Option 1: Anode rod in water heater gone bad. How to test: the smell will be only in hot water. Fix is to replace anode rod.

Option 2: Bacteria in well (or in water pipe, or in holding tank, or in pressure tank, or anywhere else in the water system). If you suspect that, have your water tested by a testing lab (look in the yellow pages for chemical, water, soil or agricultural testing labs). How to fix: Chlorinate the well. Depending on how deep the well is, and depending on whether it is cased or not, and depending on the diameter of the well pipe, you may need to use different techniques. In our case, we use special well shock chlorinating tables (which are very small, about 1/4" diameter). Given that our well is cased, very deep (750') and has 300' of water standing in it, we need to use a heck of a lot of the tablets (I vaguely remember throwing maybe a pound or two of them down). It might also help to throw some diluted chlorine bleach down the well housing (but it might also massively hurt the wiring or pipe, some plastics might not like bleach). Ask an expert, like a well maintenance company what to do (yellow pages under wells). They can also sell you the shock chlorinating tablets.

Option 3: The acquifer you're in happens to have H2S (hydrogen sulfide, rotten egg smell) in it. Often happens with acquifers that have a little methane in them. Can be a natural feature of the water (in particular if the soil is metamorphic rock containing some organics, ours happens to be former ocean bottom from hundreds of millions years ago), or can be caused by sulfur bacteria living in the water layer (not in your well). This can get better or worse with seasons; in our case, it gets somewhat worse in the dry season (summer and fall). How to test: Talk to neighbors, or to a well expert in the area, or maybe your county or city water or septic department.

In this case, mixing the water with oxygen or ozone is the easiest defense. If you already have a holding tank for the water, it might be sufficient to just make sure that the top of the tank has enough air holes. Old wooden water tanks in our area often have screened openings near the top, just for this reason. You can also let the water run through sprinklers or shower heads into the tank. Or run an air pump and inject air into the tank.

We use an ozone injection system. It works excellent for us; takes care of all the H2S smell, and also happens to knock most of the iron and all of the manganese out of the water (confirmed by testing before and after installation). In this area (northern California), you can buy them from Triple-O and from Diamond Technologies. Both are small manufacturers. They only work if you already have a reasonably sized holding tank, and the ozone needs a lot of contact time with the water. On our case this is not an issue, as we already need a 5000 gallon tank for fire protection.

The last resort is an actual filter; I vaguely remember that greensand filters charged with potassium permanganate take care of iron and of sulfur smells, but I'm not sure on that. The reason this should be the last resort is that it is the most expensive option, can reduce or impact water flow, and requires regular maintenance.

Thanks Chaz... I guess I either got it explained to me wrong, or I misunderstood the explanation. And of course, you're right about H2S. Let's chalk that mixup to a brain-fart.

Either way, the aeration system was what we used down in Florida, and it made a *HUGE* difference.

My local Sears tested my water for FREE.

Maybe yours will do the same for you?

PJ

sulphur

Air pump and air injection systems can vent outdoors if needed and the indoor version of the multiple spray head atmospheric aeration (mentioned by someone else) has a 60 cuft/minute exhaust blower that must be vented outside. Naturally the outdoor version doesn't need the blower.

Gary Quality Water Associates

info.

They work very well. I've used the indoor version for high levels of methane but I use air pump systems for H2S.

Gary Quality Water Associates

"vahania" wrote

It sounds as if you had a disposable cartridge ("whole house") filter and now have an automatically backwashed filter, which would be the right choice for H2S, iron and manganese problems.

Gary Quality Water Associates