Oh Well (Updated)

The TV weathermen have started using an expression that I kind of like. We've all heard them talk about the "Arctic Vortex" (for us that means that the jet stream that normally crosses Canada up by Hudson Bay has shifted to the South of us, bringing the sub-zero temperatures with it).  I've mentioned our flash thaws. The new name for that is "Thermal Whiplash".

Last year, just after the big January "Thermal Whiplash", our well water suddenly turned murky and gritty (easily visible in the toilet). The primary means of filtering well water seems to be via water softener. We contacted the guy who had installed the softener and he had us run the back-flush/recharge cycle several time a day for a few days (it normally runs weekly). That cleared things up but we had him come out anyway. He mentioned that he had originally recommended that a second filter be installed to remove sulfur and iron from the water and get rid of the rotten egg smell. We went ahead and have him do that..

That worked fine until this January's "Thermal Whiplash" when we had the murky/gritty water all over again. We got the filter guy out again. Our intention was to have him repack the filter and water softener After looking at the bad quality of the unfiltered water, he said that repacking would be a very temporary fix so long as the well was unaddressed.  As a stopgap, he had us up the back washing frequency to daily and recommended that we have a well company put a camera down the well to see if they could spot a problem.

Fortunately, we were able find the company that originally drilled the well back in 2006. They we able to tell us an awful lot about the well.

Thing we never knew about the well:

• They hit bedrock at 50' and kept drilling to 365'
• The water started coming in at 350' (the water level is currently at 35')
• The pump is 300' down
• The steel casing (pipe) goes down 73' which means that it extends 23' into the bedrock
• The well originally produced 5 gallons/minute. It is much more now. It ran like a fire hose for 2 hours and the well's 35' surface level (its draw down)never budged.

All good information but they really didn't find anything conclusively wrong with the well. They did suggest an extremely expensive fix that might work (a Jasewell seal between the end of the casing and the bedrock to keep water from entering the well from the outside of the casing). Other suggestions that might work were a new well or additional filtering.

We've decided to go with additional filtering and had our filter guy return to install a pre-filter to filter out the murk and grit. Our past experience is that this only happens a few days a year so we're hoping that this will take care of it. If this was a constant problem, the filter might clog and maintenance might get expensive.

3/16/16 Update:

It looks like our problem is more than just a few days a year.

We've continued to back flush the 2 filters and the water softener nightly and our water has been less murky (most of the time) but still murky.

That Jaswell seal is still a last resort. It's much too expensive and risky and it can't be done until the ground thaws. I talked with the well guy again and asked about raising the pump (thinking that it might be pulling in sediment fr the bottom). He suggested that we raise it from its current 300' level to somewhere up inside the 72' casing and below the 35' draw down level. If there was a way to be sure that that draw down wasn't subject to seasonal changes we might have gone with his proposal. Instead, we agreed to raise the pump to the 200' level and, hopefully, get it above the murk infiltration.

The well guy called back with an upgrade to the plan. He suggested that we put a Lacos separator on the pump. The separator is about 8' long and goes over the pump. The pump pulls the water through a series of baffles that create a centrifugal force that removes the sediment from the water.

We had them out last week to pull the pump all the way up, install the Lacos separator and reinstall at the 200' level. It became obvious to me as I watched them that, since they were scraping the entire length of the well twice as they raised and lowered the pump, the water was going to be dirtier than ever until things could settle. Even the Lacos separator couldn't keep up with that amount of crud. The water was pretty bad for a few days but, this past weekend, it suddenly cleared. It's even clear when we pull from the tap before all of the filters.

So now we have clear water but we are still back flushing the filters and softeners nightly and we never did repack the cruddy filter and water softener. Our softener guy is coming back tomorrow to repack them both and get everything back to normal. We've become such good customers that  even giving us a 2 for 1 deal.

-JC-

Disco Inferno (Burn Baby Burn)

I didn't mention in the previous posting that, when the streams froze, we were going through a period where we hardly saw temperatures above the single digits. One day, the low was -6° F and the high was 1° F (the windchill got down in the -30°s). We've managed to get in our morning walks most mornings but we draw the line at windchills below zero (just too painful).

Although, it's been cold, we've only had 3 instances of measurable snowfall. One was a week before Thanksgiving and 2 have been in the last couple of weeks.

As usual, I've spent the warmer (at or above freezing) fall and early winter days cutting back brush and dead trees. We're allowed to burn here from January 15 until May 1 and I managed to get 7 huge burn piles together this year. I've already managed to burn 5 of them. Even standing next to a big fire, 20° is my threshold for committing myself to being outside all day tending the flames.

Later that same day (our third measurable snowfall):

-JC-