Is the rotten egg smell in your water causing you to buy bottled water or dread taking showers?
Guess what? You don’t have to live like that!
Contact Us Today So We Can Fix Your Water.
Pure water is colorless, tasteless, and odorless. Unfortunately there are many ways that our water can become anything but all of these. Often times many peoples’ solution to this problem is to buy bottled water, which really isn’t a great option when it comes to the environmental impact.
In our region, the odor issues we treat most often are rotten egg smell, chlorine smell, and a fishy smell. There are many reasons for these to arise, but none have a high risk for health impact. They do, however impact your quality of life.
Fixing It The Secondwind Way
The sulfate-reducing bacteria that is the cause of most of our hydrogen sulfide (the cause of that lovely rotten egg smell) in this region is a non-aerobic organism that feeds on the sulfate mineral naturally occurring in this region. The odor is the result of the metabolism of these bacteria. Any method of treatment needs to take this into account.
We use one of two more homeowner friendly methods. We can inject air into the water which makes the environment aerobic and no longer favorable for the organism. Critical aspects to our aeration configuration include a reliable method of injecting the air, such as an air pump, which means we do not risk build up of minerals in the piping, which is what can happen when a venture valve is used to inject air. The air has to be given time to do its work, so we pass the water through a large, 13 x 54 aeration / precipitation tank. This tank allows for any precipitated material to settle to the bottom where it can be blown down as part of our preventive maintenance routine. In addition, this tank has a reliable vent which allows excess air to off-gas.
The other method uses a catalytic carbon which interacts with oxygen in the water to oxidize the hydrogen sulfide odor. This system is able to combat the build up of biofilms often caused by the presence of the sulfate-reducing bacteria through a rinse, as part of the backwash cycle, with a dilute bleach solution. This all happens automatically without homeowner intervention. This system, the Sulfur Guard by Kinetico is reliably removing hydrogen sulfide from hundreds of homes in the region.
When the odor is the result of a natural chemical reaction in deep wells, and is a constant, strong hydrogen sulfide odor, the same two methods work. In the aeration / precipitation configuration the injection of the air actually causes the hydrogen sulfide to precipitate into elemental sulfur, which settles in the tank or gets caught in a post filter. Occasionally when the hydrogen sulfide odor is extremely strong and the water supply has inadequate oxygen to cause the reaction we need, we will install air injection followed by the Sulfur Guard. This combination can eradicate even the strongest hydrogen sulfide odor.
Don’t suffer with that nasty smell in your water. Let us fix it and say bye-bye to the stink once and for all! Call us today at 603-641-5767 or email info@secondwindwater.com.
