For the last few weeks our well water has been really bad. I don’t know why. It tastes awful. It has black residue in it that clogs the filters straight away the black particles can be clearly seen in the bath and stuck to the porcelain.
We live above an ancient swamp where there is a lot of coal and natural gasses in the earth, water travels through the rock in the ground dissolving some of the natural mineral deposits and carrying them along and this mix ends up captured in our well so our water smells like sulfur on a good day. Any silver worn around the house goes instantly black. But the water is filtered twice before we drink it. They tell me the sulfurous bacteria is organic and occurs naturally and is not harmful to health.
But lately the water has worsened and the taps are delivering this salty, brackish blackened water.
But the water heater could be the problem, or the water softener that filters the water could be the problem or the well could be the problem or the pipes could be the problem. All of these things deteriorate over time especially in water that can contain the naturally occuring hydrogen sulfide or sulfur bacteria from the well water.
The last time we had this blackened water the well was running dry and we had to dig deeper, but we have had so much rain in the last season that this cannot possibly be the problem.
But now the quality has deteriorated to the point where I do not trust it and have begun to buy drinking water.
I have never bought drinking water before. And water is a dollar a gallon. Bottled tap water is big business.
Of course there are moves afoot to find the problem with our water and clean it up but this period of undrinkable water has really made me think of the value of good water. Having unreliable drinking water has made me truly appreciate water like never before. I used to drink piles of water but not so much now that I am buying it. I never waste it. Anything left over in my glass is poured into the kettle to be boiled for tea. The water I cook with is strained into the pig bucket. If I run out I have to get in the car and go off to obtain more so I am careful with its use.
I save the containers and carry them into town and fill them there carrying my precious clean water home in the company of women down the ages.
There are many countries in the world that have dubious water quality -some people have no water at all.
If I were a woman in a refugee camp in semi-arid Dadaab I would be grateful for my smelly dirty water. Many peoples walk miles to get good water.
In fact there are some towns and cities in America who have frequent scares due to scary drinking water pollution – being told to boil the water before drinking or simply not drink it for a period. Flint being the most publicised. Many large cities have water with terribly high levels of harmful chemicals.
And this problem is world wide.
I remember when I lived in Portugal for a time, every weekend the family would drive up into the hills to an ancient water gathering spring with an old tap in a field, we would park by the road, walk up the track then sit on a rock and fill many jugs with the sweet mountain water then take the weeks-supply of drinking water back down to the city.
So, my little problem with my own little well pales in comparison, however it has made me truly appreciate having the ability to control the quality of my own ample supply of water. (And hopefully soon we can regain that control). And the value of it. no more wasting water.
So I am loading up the empties in the car this afternoon and going off in search of good drinking water.
Boo can come for a ride.
I hope you have a lovely day.
celi
The Kitchen's Garden 
78 responses to “How good is your water”
Here is Oz, if you’re not on ‘town’ water, the bore water is usually undrinkable because of high levels of dissolved minerals. All our household water is rainwater but we can go long gaps between downpours so need large storage to get us through. The house has a 110,000L concrete tank but all livestock and garden water is (windmill) pumped up the hill from our dam to a large holding tank in the garden (the highest spot on the property) from where I can pump it to any garden tap or it gravity feeds all the stock troughs. I’m blessed not to have to worry too much because we put the infrastructure in while we were still in the paid workforce. I hope you get it all sorted soon.
OK: I am not on ‘town water’ but rain water seems to suffice. Rain and dams from whatever . . . I AM careful: but very simplistically, using stuff like ‘Brita’ and have actually drunk for a number of years right from the tap_
I have never gotten used to city water after spending much of my childhood drinking sweet well water (no sulphur.)
The city water I have now (and have had for 2.5 years) is even worse. It’s supposedly drinkable. We filter it for chlorine and minerals and things, but to do so we had to take out a failing water softener. I learned that anything over a 7 on I-forget-the-name-of-the-scale is considered “hard.” We are at a 29. So our dishwasher broke and our kettle gets chunks of minerals in it. When I can the jars and lids all go cloudy. Something new to add to the list when searching for our next home, I guess.
Oh no – I thought city water would be better? I can never keep a dishwasher going – (we have had three in the last ten years) .. I have given up now and just wash the dishes by hand. Do your hands get really dry? mine are always cracking.
Some city water is better than some well water. Our last house has nicer water but we were in a different water processing area. We still filtered chlorine out but didn’t have any other issues. Yes, my hands dry out far more than they used to. And I get dandruff now and didn’t used to. And my clothes don’t act the same after washing…
We, too, wash dishes by hand. I figure it will be easier when there are fewer tiny Tupperware and things for the wee ones.
Does this ever bring back memories, Celi. Up until about a dozen years ago, all of the drinking water for both homes in Michigan was either bought by the jug or carted in. When I’d visit, the first and last errands would be to run to the water tap at the town’s water facility. Although there was usually plenty of water in the wells, it wasn’t potable. In periods of drought, I’d call and have the “water man” come to fill the wells. That would give Mom & Zia enough water to do laundry and the like until my next visit. Just after Mom passed, water lines were brought into the area and all of the wells disconnected. What a difference! Even so, water conservation was so ingrained in us all that we never did start acting like water was abundant. Each of us had carted far too many jugs of water to ever feel comfortable using it. 🙂
Water! Ours is relatively good — it goes through a softener and reverse osmosis filter, but what comes out of the tap is nice enough. I do find city water, and whatever chemicals it’s treated with, tastes funny. Iron is our main problem, and any water that stands for an amount of time starts to look yellow/orange, but it’s not too bad. I’ve been amazed at how the water quality and content varies from well to well, though.
I asked my (hydrologist) friend once about the relationship between rainfall and well levels — how closely to they correspond? She said not THAT closely (unless, I suppose, one has a shallow well). The water takes a long time to move from the surface down to wherever one is pumping it up from. I think it’s more likely to run off to wherever before it trickles down to the well. We have a decent-size pond, so I hope that means our rainwater is getting captured and (eventually) delivered down to where we collect it from!
I just noticed the past several days that our city water smells like chlorine. It’s left me wondering if I should be drinking it.
Is there fracking in your area?
I don’t think so – none that I have heard of anyway – we have coal in the earth here not oil
Hope this gets sorted for you. We are in tank water .. beautiful stuff
it is beautiful – i remember it