FLUSHING OF A DISINFECTED WELL

You will need:  OTO, provided by Secondwind, a long garden hose, and some time.  The amount of time that a well flushing will take is impossible to predict, being a function of the depth and recovery rate of the well, the height the pump is hung at, and the strength of chlorine present.

AFTER 24 HOURS, FLUSHING THE WELL: 

Leave your water treatment system on bypass for now.  Flush the well by running your garden hose to the woods or a sandy area.  The chlorinated water is not good for lawns or gardens. If you know you have a well that recovers quickly, you can run the hose on full force.  If you know your well has a more limited supply, run the hose on a reduced flow.

Stay around and check on the water stream every now and then to make sure you don’t temporarily run the level of water in the well down to the pump intake.  Should the water stream drop down to a trickle, turn off the hose for a few hours.

Check the stream of water every half hour or so for chlorine.  Using the OTO provided, fill a white cup or mug with the water from the hose and squirt a few drops of OTO into the cup.  If the OTO turns yellow or orange, bleach is still present and you need to flush more.

If you wish to disinfect your water filter or softener, keep running the water until the chlorine strength has dropped to a slightly detectable level, which is signified by a pale yellow color when you use the OTO drops.  Put your system back on line and run water to the kitchen sink for a few minutes.  If you have a Kinetico, run some water through both sides by moving the black dot on the top of the valve to the opposite position, and running water again at the sink.  After you have done this, put the systems back on bypass until the disinfection flushing is complete.  (This will prevent systems from becoming fouled due to a higher than normal level of sediment.)

FLUSHING THE HOUSE:

When the drop of OTO in your white cup makes no color change, the chlorine is gone and you may put your water treatment equipment back on line, and replace any cartridges.  Now run water at each sink, hot and cold, until the OTO drop stays clear in a cup.  Flushing the hot water may take some time.

Remember that the chlorine used in the disinfection will oxidize iron in your well water.  You may see some rusty colored water during this process and for a bit after.

Occasionally the disinfection process stirs up sediment from the well.  Do not be alarmed if your cartridge filter plugs faster than usual for a day or so after the flushing.

Drywell Considerations

Some customers may choose to send the backwash from their water treatment system to a drywell to avoid sending the volume of water to the building’s septic system.  Check regulations in your area.

A schematic of a drywell follows.  The basic concepts for your contractor to bear in mind when constructing a drywell include:

There must be a pitch in the pipe that runs from the foundation to the drywell. The water that goes out to the drywell will be gravity fed, not pressurized, so the pitch must be present to aid in proper drainage.

We recommend that the pipe going from the foundation to the drywell be 4” schedule 40 PVC, again because the stream of water will be flowing based on gravity, not pressure.  The piping from the sill to the ground can be 1 ½”.

The horizontal pipe must be below frost line.

We do not recommend drywells for the reject water from a reverse osmosis system as the rinse (reject) water leaves the RO at such a slow drip that in extremely cold conditions the water could freeze before it reaches the ground.