Plumbing help? Brown water with sediment after new softener

'48

 

Is the blue tank new? The reason is it happens in the spring time.

 

74". A model U or UL. Mines a '41 ULH. Last year for the 80".

 

The pictures in the thread aren't mine. If you read the original post, you can see that I said we had a completely new system put in to replace one from 1984 that wasn't working at all.

 

You have sediment in your blue water tank. Why, I do not know it happens. I guess your ran well water low and sucked up sediment that was deposited in your in your water tank. If you want to fix the problem immediately follow my instructions.

 

Did you say you flushed the water heater? That could be a source of accumulated sediment as well.

 

We have a tankless. Also installed new 6 months ago

 

I had a Kinetico system installed years ago and was getting sediment after install.
Turns out they had the lines installed backwards and was pushing resin beads into my water.

 

Sounds like you have it covered. Wifey no like but unless there is some type of installation problem it might just be a time thing.

 

Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. I suspect the well under the crawl space is the original circa 1970. We would be looking at 9k to dig a new well, and that's not including the cost of somehow filling the old one.
My choices in that situation would be $2.5k and cut open the living room floor, or 10k all said and done for a new well, pump, bladder tank, and torn up yard. I'm going to try flushing the system a hundred times if necessary and see if that works. I'd rather pay a couple hundred extra on my sewer bill if that fixes the problem than either of those other options.

 

Well my wife just sent me this. This is with the system bypassed. It was clear this morning and now is coming out filthy. Idk what even to do. The company that did the softener is saying their tech is on vacation for a few weeks. I'm pissed now.
This was never an issue before they installed the softener. I'm now very worried that the system somehow jeopardized the integrity of our well.

 

Yes that's rough. I had sort of an opposite issue. The former owner built a deck over the septic tank riser and I had to tear the deck down to have my septic tank pumped. So you have a private well but you are on a municipal sewer system?

 

Yeah

 

Sediment or cloudiness is usually a result of either running the well very low or dry, or a cracked well-casing allowing surface water to dump into the well.

If your well was run low or dry, then allowing it to recharge should help. That means not running the water for a while, maybe a day or two, it really depends on a few factors. The reason it happened in the first place might be because a ton of water was used during the softener system installation, maybe to test or flush the new system? In addition, the backwashing/recharge cycle for the softening system might use a lot more water too. If the well ran dry, and was never allowed to recharge due to regular useage after installation plus the backwash cycling, this might be why it's still producing sediment.

As far as infiltration from the surface, I doubt that's happening since you said it's located in the crawlspace, which I assume is not flooded when it rains.

 

@TS4x4
Are you making any progress?
Having been in your shoes several years ago I'm pulling for you on this

 

Good news actually!
After calling yesterday morning and insisting that they send someone, a tech from the softener company came out and took a look at the system. He immediately got on the phone with his company and flat out cursed the first tech's name lol. Went off about how he should have actually tested our water draw/flow and never installed a system straight to it pulling 7gpm. The new tech was great. Added a reducer, turned it down to 2.5GPM and simply extended the backwash cycle to compensate. He ran it a few times and now the water is clear again. Fingers crossed that it stays that way!

He was 99% sure that the initial setup over-drew the well, sucking the sediment into the system. Also stated that since we have lower pressure copper pipes, not PEX, the high draw rate probably dislodged existing sediment deposits in our pipes. So far so good, and I hope it stays that way. Now I just have to get our tankless hot water heater flushed. I have half the mind to send the softener company the bill, since it was their setup that shot sediment through it. At the same time though, I just want to be done with them.
So far so good

 

Good stuff...good for you