Phased Inconvenience

We find out our well is contaminated, we have to get it shocked, and shouldn’t drink from it. Bathing and washing was fine, but no drinking.

Phase I

So we get bottled water and start a process of boiling water for things like the coffee maker, dog, and cat. Oddly enough this seemed really inconvenient. Totally threw a wrench in the works for us, even though people everywhere live their daily lives never drinking the water from their taps (my neighbor for example – dunno why).

Phase II

We shock the well. This boiled down to pouring a bottle of fresh clorox down the well, recirculating water from the hose back into the well until we smelled bleach from the hose, then shutting everything down for 20 hours. For 20 hours we had no water at all. We used buckets previously filled with water to flush the toilets and continued to drink bottled water, though now the cat, dog, and coffee maker got bottled water too. Wow! Now things were really inconvenient. Made having to only drink bottled water a breeze.

Though I think what made it so hard was mental screw-up it put on us. Our power goes out quite regularly and can stay out anywhere from 2 – 6 hours. Having no water and flushing from buckets isn’t that tough for us. I think what made it weird was that was the only thing that was wrong. We still had electricity. The AC still worked. Everything else worked, yet because the water was out I kept thinking everything was off. Already sleep deprived and sick, my brain had to work REALLY REALLY hard to deal with only not having water. I think that was the most taxing. Actually dealing with it was easy. Dealing with the fact it was only the water was the hard part.

Yeah. I need sleep. I know.

After 20 hours, we started the hose to purge the bleach from the system. It ran for a total of 5 hours I think. Intermittently we ran the sinks and flushed the toilets too. Is it all still contaminated? Who knows? We have to give it a few days (still no drinking – back to phase I), then get it retested. In a few months retested again. Oh boy.

Have I mentioned our water is some of the best tasting water we’ve had and we’ve never gotten sick?

Yeah. All this for that.

In addition to the shocking, we got an extension on our well casing and a new cap.

Considering the top of the casing and cap were in the dirt with no seal and a hole, this should be a significant improvement.

Now I just have to make sure nobody hits it at the edge of our driveway.

The plumber guy was funny. He deals with wells a lot. He came in all “Your well’s probably about between 100′ and 200′ deep. It’ll take at least 1 bottle of clorox, blah, blah, blah”.

After measuring the depth of the well to find out it’s only 47′ (yeah, that’s pretty shallow), then pouring a whole bottle of clorox in it and it taking forever to recirculate (contemplated more), he says, “Your well’s weird. Must be a giant lake down there.”

Yep. Welcome to our humble lake abode.

The guy was great. He was really helpful even if a little funny.

The cool thing is I found out my static height is only 15′. That means this winter I might be doing one of these inside the basement.

We’ll see. Let’s first hope the well clears up. Then when I lose power, I’ll still have water. Won’t that screw with my head.

– b