The equipment your well water needs,in the order it has to go in.
Enter the lab numbers and get the stages, sized, with the operating limit behind each one. Iron, pH, hardness and manganese decide the equipment together. Get one of them wrong and a correct $2,000 system underperforms from the day it goes in.
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If you have a test
Build a treatment plan
Enter the lab numbers and get the stages in the order they have to be plumbed, sized, with the limit behind each one.
If you do not
Start from what you can see
Orange stains, a rotten egg smell, black specks, water that ruins laundry. Each one narrows down to a short list of causes.
Before spending anything
Test the right things
Which parameters change the decision, which lab to use, and how to take a sample that means something.
Common advice, checked
Three pieces of advice that cost money
All three are common and plausible, and each fails for a specific technical reason.
“A water softener will fix orange staining.”
Only sometimes, and only at low levels of dissolved iron. Above roughly 1 ppm it stops being dependable, and against iron that is already orange coming out of the tap it does nothing at all, because ion exchange does not remove particles. Meanwhile the iron coats the resin and costs capacity permanently.
Iron filter or softener“An iron filter will also handle the black staining.”
Manganese oxidises far more slowly than iron and needs a distinctly higher pH to do it. A filter chosen on the iron number alone can clear every orange stain in the house and leave the black ones exactly where they were.
Manganese“Ultraviolet light handles bacteria, so it can go anywhere in the line.”
It goes last. Light has to reach the organism, and iron, manganese, hardness and turbidity all block it. A UV lamp on raw well water is an expensive way to do very little.
UV disinfectionStart from the symptom
What is the water doing?
Black stains or black specks in well water
Manganese, in most cases, and it turns up at a twentieth of the concentration iron needs to cause trouble. It is also the reason a new iron filter sometimes fixes the orange staining and leaves the black staining exactly as it was.
Blue-green stains in sinks and tubs
Copper, dissolved out of your own plumbing by acidic water and redeposited where water sits. The water arrived at the house without it.
Cloudy or milky well water
Three possible causes, and a glass of water separates them. Cloudiness that clears from the bottom upward is dissolved air and needs nothing. Particles that settle are sediment. A haze that does not clear, especially with an orange tint, is precipitated iron.
Orange or rust stains from well water
Iron, in essentially every case. The useful question is not whether it is iron but which form, because dissolved iron and already-oxidised iron need different equipment.
Slime or sludge in well water
Iron bacteria, most likely. They are living organisms that metabolise iron and produce a slime as they go, and that slime is why this problem does not respond to the equipment that handles ordinary iron.
Well water smells like rotten eggs
Hydrogen sulfide. Run the hot and cold taps separately before doing anything else, because if only the hot water smells, the water heater is manufacturing it and the repair costs a fraction of a treatment system.
Head to head
Choosing between two options
Air injection vs chemical injection
Air injection is the default and the right answer for most well iron. Chemical injection is for the specific cases air cannot reach: sulfide above about 6 ppm, very heavy iron, organic iron and iron bacteria.
Water softener vs iron filter: which your well needs
They are not alternatives. An iron filter oxidises and removes iron; a softener exchanges calcium and magnesium. Water with both problems needs both, in that order, and water with only one needs only one.
UV vs chlorination for well water
UV where the water is clear and the contamination is at the source. Chlorination where the water is not clear, where the plumbing itself is suspect, or where iron and sulfide need oxidising anyway.
Four numbers settle most of it
Iron, manganese, hardness and pH. Leave blank whatever the lab did not measure, and anything that cannot be decided without it is named rather than guessed.
Build the plan