Homeowners with private wells have a great resource on their properties. A healthy well provides the freshest water available, unprocessed and untreated by municipal service. They have no water bills from utility companies. They don’t need to rely on the grid for their water. 

On the other hand, they do need to know how to keep their well water healthy. Their wells require regular maintenance, something that comes as a bit of a shock to people moving to the country for the first time. They already know that they need to replace their roofs every so often and mow their lawns. If their doors or windows leak, they notice and get busy fixing them. But wells … don’t they just keep providing water forever?

Well, no. They need maintenance on a regular schedule. 

A Healthy Household Depends on Pure, Healthy Water

A household could be made unhealthy by poor water quality. This makes the condition of one’s well even more important than the condition of roofs or windows. 

If there is an elderly person or a baby in the household, or someone with a compromised immune system, it becomes even more vital to monitor the condition of the well and water. 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, commonly found contaminants in private wells can lead to the following health problems: 

• Gastrointestinal illnesses
• Tooth discoloration and pitting
• Allergies and rashes
• Reduction of the ability of the blood to carry oxygen
• Liver or kidney damage
• Anemia
• Increased risk of cancer
• Nervous system damage
• Harm to the reproductive system

That makes it worth the time and work to properly maintain that well. 

Start Here: Annual or Biannual Disinfection

To eliminate contamination of household water, disinfect the well every year, or better yet, every six months. But don’t use household bleach for this job, even though some official agencies recommend it. This kind of bleach is heavier than water and can get trapped in various pockets in the well or the household’s plumbing. Trapped deposits mean that bleach may not be cleared out of the water system by running the water for a while. 

This can then cause the family to consume water contaminated by bleach which may result in a whole new set of problems like these:

• Bad taste and smell to the water
• Food allergies
• Increased risk of cancer
• Congenital abnormalities

We recommend use of an FDA-approved chlorination agent that will not get trapped in your pump or pipes. That’s what we provide for our clients. We also send along a post-disinfection test kit. After disinfection, you want to make sure that there’s not a continuing problem that will just re-infect the well immediately. 

Locating the Right Problem to Determine the Right Solution

The key to maintaining a healthy water supply is being able to identify problems. If you disinfect your well and test results are not satisfactory, you need to know where to go now. To avoid hit-or-miss solutions that can go on forever (while you lug bottles of drinking water into the house), help is available from ETR Laboratories. We not only offer tests that help you see what’s in your water that shouldn’t be, we help you understand your results so you can resolve the problem speedily.

The answer could be well repair, new well cap, installing a filter or even relocating the well. Your test results can tell you, when they are combined with the experience of providing hundreds of thousands of well water tests. Give us a call if you need help keeping your well healthy: (800) 344-9977.