The Investigator Series #4 — How We Solved a Complex Community Well Water Mystery
There is an upscale community near us with about one hundred homes in the development. This development is served by a community well water supply. Typically, such systems are serviced by licensed companies familiar with these setups. In this case, the homeowners’ association decided to manage it themselves and hired a resident with a chemistry background to maintain the system. A red flag that led to the complex water treatment challenges I was called to help resolve.
Community wells are maintained much like municipal systems: disinfectant products (usually chlorine and ammonia) are added, and water sampling ensures safe, consistent levels. Frequently, polyphosphates are added to encapsulate water supply lines to prevent scale from entering the water supply in municipal water supplies. Community well water supplies often use polyphosphates to encapsulate iron to try and prevent it from staining landscaping, driveways, sidewalks, and homes. However, in this community's well water supply, blending water from multiple wells introduced water chemistry issues that created widely varying water quality problems.
The Difference Between Community Wells and Municipal Water
Community well systems often rely on one or several wells that operate in rotation or redundancy. Depending on community size and demand, a site might use five to ten wells drawing from varying depths and aquifers. Each well’s chemistry can differ — creating challenges when water from multiple sources mixes before treatment.
Analyzing the Water Problem
This community had five wells: four active wells and one used as a backup. Periodic rotation was designed to extend system life, but caused fluctuating water chemistry due to high iron in one of the wells. Typically, an outside contractor experienced in maintaining community well water systems handles all the maintenance of such water supplies. In this community, the homeowners' association chose to have a resident with a water chemistry background maintain the community's well system. This sent up red flags for me already. By examining public well records and water treatment logs obtained from the homeowner, and sending a water sample out for testing at an independent lab, we uncovered water chemistry issues tied to specific wells and fluctuating water chemistry due to inconsistent maintenance of the community well system.
The homeowner nearest the well house had the worst water symptoms: inconsistent water clarity, rusty water, and staining. Comparing the water records revealed one well testing at 4 ppm iron, while the others averaged 2 ppm — the first clear clue.
Find water test results for your city or community water supply
Investigative Findings
1. Listening to the Customer and the Community
Our homeowner and other residents across the development reported rust stains on landscaping, homes, and sidewalks, along with rusty water and clarity issues — classic iron oxidation problems compounded by inconsistent water treatment.
2. Diagnosing the Water Problems
The community’s system used chlorine for disinfection and polyphosphates to bind iron. While effective for preventing stains, polyphosphates can block ion exchange, foul softener resin, and reduce performance. Iron bound by polyphosphates will also pass through typical iron filtration systems. Frequent variations in chlorine and polyphosphate feed rates worsened the inconsistency of the water.
3. Providing the Proper Water Treatment Solutions
Using available water test data and results from an independent lab analysis, I built three miniature water treatment systems to simulate flow, evaluate media performance, and confirm the ideal solution:
- Aeration Filtration System with Activated Carbon, Birm, and KDF-85 — removes chlorine, oxidizes and filters out iron, and breaks polyphosphate bonds.
- Water Softener with KDF-85 — removes 18 grains of hardness and neutralizes residual polyphosphates.
- Final Polishing Filter using Centaur Carbon and KDF-85 — ensures consistent clarity and excellent taste.
After several experiments and adjustments to media ratios with the mini filtration system
System Design and Final Solution
- Two Clack 16×65 Aeration Filtration Systems in duplex — alternating for balanced media regeneration and water quality. With a lockout mode for the system in regeneration. To treat the irrigation system and household water. In winter, one filtration tank is bypassed for a month by us during salt deliveries, and the filtration tanks are alternated in and out of service to ensure the media stays fresh and ready for start-up in the spring again. The hot and cold water is always tested during every salt delivery.
- Clack Twin-Tank 10×54 Water Softener for high-demand hardness removal.
- Clack 13×54 Backwashing Filter with Centaur Carbon and KDF-85 for final polish.
- Reverse Osmosis was considered, but the homeowners liked the taste of the water so much that they decided to hold off on adding a Reverse Osmosis system for now.
- On my follow-up call, I tested the water, checked the system over completely, went over everything with them again, and discussed the maintenance program and salt delivery schedule we set up for them to keep the system working optimally.
I wish you Good days and Good water!
For more guides on water treatment. Subscribe to the TWSB for expert advice on water softening, water filtration, drinking water systems, water treatment system reviews, water softener salt, DIY, water issues in the news, water and our health, how to treat your water, and comprehensive water testing. Product name, logo, brands, and other registered trademarks featured or referred to within TheWaterSoftenerBlog.com are the property of their respective trademark holders.
Comments
Post a Comment
The Water Softener Blog encourages your constructive comments on our blog and content. If there is a water treatment problem you would like to see discussed here please send us a suggestion and we will do our best to accommodate your request.
Thank you, Ray