Lot’s of customers have dug wells in NH. The surface water in our State is very plentiful for most the year. Dug wells do have one major problem.

After a few years the nice clean sand that was trucked in to surround the well gets full of organic material from the water that is constantly flowing into the well. Bacteria feeds on this Organic soup and finds its way into the well, eventually showing up in the drinking water. Shocking the well with bleach will clean up the Bacteria, temporarily. However, even the best Dug Wells should be sanitized every Spring after the snow melt/spring run off.

For instructions on how to sanitize a well go to our website under our equipment maintenance tips section. Ultra Violet Light Systems and Chlorine Feeds can sterilize Bacteria so that the water is drinkable, but realize that Secondwind Water Systems does not sterilize for E-Coli Bacteria. E-coli is a sign of fecal contamination and that means you may have a serious life threatening problem with the water that goes beyond the E-Coli. There are many other nasty contaminants in fecal matter that can be very harmful to you. E-Coli is just the indicator. Sterilizing the E-Coli is not a solution, it just gets rid of the indicator. The best solution is to fix the problem. Either finding and eliminating the source of nutrient causing the E-Coli , then sanitizing the well and distribution system, or drilling/pounding a Bed Rock well, that pulls the water from hundreds of feet down in the ground. These Bed Rock wells are almost always Bacteria free and rarely see the seasonal fluctuations that occur in a Dug Well.

I’ll be writing more about Dug Wells later this week. So please check back later, and enjoy your great water!

In the water treatment business we talk with all kinds of people about a wide variety of water quality problems.  There is one thing in this business that baffles me.  Why do people say they want to be sure their water is safe, spend money on testing by an independent lab, only to say they don’t care when an actual health issue is found with the water?  In our geography, New Hampshire and northern Massachusetts, we have a fair amount of naturally occurring arsenic, uranium and radon.  Our customers tend to be on private wells so they are free to have whatever contaminants they want to have in their water.  But again, if you spend money testing for these items and they are found in non-trivial concentrations, why then would you not choose to do something about it?  If you don’t believe the contaminants really pose a health risk, then why bother testing?  I understand that the health risks posed by the contaminants have here are long term, but usually by the time someone tests their water they have been consuming the water for years.