Hand Pumped Well Disinfection FAQs

Questions & answers on how to shock or disinfect a drinking water well whose water is pumped only by a hand pump or "pitcher pump".

This article series explains how to shock a well, when, why, and exactly how to chlorinate a drinking water well.

Page top: an early advertisement for hand pumps from W&B Douglas, discussed in our article on HAND PUMP for WELLS.

Q&A on How to Shock or Chlorinate a Well Served by a Manual or Hand Pump

Our page top sketch illustrating both deep and shallow water well construction and depths is provided courtesy of Carson Dunlop Associates, a Toronto home inspection, education & report writing tool company [ carsondunlop.com ].

How to disinfect a well served by a hand pump - difficult to pump out the disinfectant-treated water by hand

We have a well on our off-grid property that we installed a hand pump on to get water. We must have introduced some bacteria as it is quite stinky now.

We only are at the property sporadically but would like to Shock it if possible. We have no way to adequately pump the chlorinated water out of the well and am wondering if it will eventually dissipate.

I do have a Berkley water filter that removes chlorine but am just wondering if pouring chlorine down the well without flushing it completely out would be a problem or how long we should wait before we use the water. The well is about 465' deep and we have a deep well hand pump that we use.

It takes about 13 strokes to get water and probably about 20-25 strokes for a gallon of water. On 2016-04-12 by Kathy

by (mod) -

Kathy:

Thoughts on smells in water in an off-grid water well.

Stinky well water may be due to any of a variety of causes: sulphur, a dead animal, iron-loving bacteria, something else. Start by having your water tested for common contaminants; otherwise one cannot possibly know what are the hazards of, nor the remedies for smelly drinking water.

As you can read in WELL CHLORINATION & DISINFECTION, you will need to calculate the proper amount of bleach to properly and safely sanitize a well. Doing a half-baked guess increases the risk of either illness from bacteria or trouble getting rid of excess chlorine in the system.

Your water filter itself can become contaminated and serve as an odor or bacteria reservoir.

Although your well is 465 ft deep, it'd be unusual to be pumping by hand from that depth.

A typical pitcher pump like the one I show here and discuss at HAND PUMP for WELLS cannot lift water more than about 25 feet.

It does sound as if the pump is working well enough for you to deliver water. But if you are only drawing from the top 25 ft. or so of a deep well and you chlorinate the well using normal means, it may be difficult to remove the chlorinated water as circulation and mixing of chlorine between the bottom 440 ft and the to 25 ft.of water

(IF the water column in your well is really of that depth) will be virtually nil.

See STATIC HEAD DEFINITION to read about the column of water in a well and its relation to the well bottom and ground surface.

If I were in an off grid property with a deep well I'd consider a solar-operated well pump system, and if my testing and well shocking found a water quality problem (bacteria, smell, other) that needed treatment, I'd add a treatment system.

No simple point of use water filter can handle all contaminants nor high volumes of usage that occur over time.

Bottom line: if there really is a volume of water too large to pump out by hand and you need to disinfect the well you might need to use a portable electric pump to temporarily pump down the water in the well.

by Kathy: we're using a deep well hand pump from Sunshine Works with a 325 foot deep drop pipe: concerns are bacteria and water odor

We actually purchased a simple pump from Sunshine Works - the pipe drops down about 325'. According to well log, static water level was 278'.

Total depth is 405' not 465' I stated earlier.

We had water tested and the only concern was coliforms present per 100ml - no e-coli. The pH is 7.3.

Reply by (mod) -

OK so the bore depth is 405 ft. and water rises in the bore to a top height of 278 ft from the bottom.

Thank you for the reference to Sunshine Works - I stand CORRECTED: I was mistaken about the limits of hand pumping. According to Sunshine, their hand pump can lift water from depths. Quoting:

"With the standard 24 inch handle, the hand-operated Simple Pump (Simple Pump Website) requires very little force to operate and easily pumps 5 gallons per minute from depths to about 200 feet, delivered at normal household water pressure of about 50 psi."

Here is a description of a DEEP WELL HAND PUMP SYSTEM [Website] from SimplePump.com that can lift water from up to 325 feet below ground.

Sunshine also provides solar powered pumps.

Keep in mind that the flow rate of any pump, hand or powered, will diminish as the depth is increased.

Good to have no e-coli, but

Watch out: coliform in the well is still not acceptable, and in my opinion it's also a hint that any other contaminants on the ground surface could be in the well, since coliform in wells most-often gets there from surface runoff entering the well or its aquifer. If you only tested for "bacteria" you might find just coliform but you're not testing for other things like sulphur.

So we have two concerns: bacteria and odor.

You might check with your test lab to cover just what was the scope of testing you had done, and whether the lab can test for common odor sources like sulphur or iron-loving bacteria.

Have you also inspected the well and well cap to convince yourselves no critter fell in?

by Kathy: we had our well water tested: here are the results

Yes we have been happy with the hand pump and it meets our needs but I believe we may have introduced the contaminates when we installed the pipe for hand pump.

The well was capped with no pump when we bought the place. We installed the simple pump ourselves and then had water tested. It was not stinky water that we recall when we were doing this.

We had it tested for sulfate which was 10 mg/L, fluoride, chloride and some other inorganics, also tested metals ( aluminum,calcium, magnesium, manganese, potassium, sodium, and zinc) and then the microbiological which was the total coliforms and e-coli.

Also nitrogen, solids and pH. Solar pump for the simple pump setup will not pump deep enough.

I think we will have to have a professional probably come shock it. I do not know if our Berkey water filter would take care of what we need to be able to drink it without doing something to the well

by (mod) - recommendations for your hand pumped well

OK

Indeed plumbing materials are not kept in sterile conditions before they're inserted into a well, that's why SOP is to shock a well after working on it.

1. If the only contaminant source was one introduced by working on the well, then it should be cured by proper well shocking procedure

2. Cure dead animal smell: If you smell a dead animal the well needs to be cleaned and disinfected it's possible to retrieve animal remains from a well.

If you need to actually look down the well bore, see WELL BORE CAMERA SYSTEMS

And if there's an animal corpse in the well, see WELL PIPE RETRIEVAL TOOLS and WELL CLEANING PROCEDURES, then continue with the last step:

3. Disinfect the well and use a portable electric pump to remove the disinfectant treated water after a sufficient wait time (24 hours or more is best).

...

Continue reading at WELL CHLORINATION & DISINFECTION - topic home, or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

Or see these

Recommended Articles

• HAND PUMP for WELLS
• WATER WELL SAFETY & SANITATION, 6 STEPS-EPA
• WELL CHLORINATION & DISINFECTION
• WELL CLEANING PROCEDURES to address clogged well screens, blocked foot valves, or debris in the well bore.
• WELL DISINFECTION PROCEDURE, POST FLOODING
• WELL CONSTRUCTION INFORMATION SOURCES

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HAND PUMP / PITCHER PUMP WELL DISINFECTION at InspectApedia.com - online encyclopedia of building & environmental inspection, testing, diagnosis, repair, & problem prevention advice.

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