Hot water sulfur smell solutions

[Jim Becker]

268’ feet deep here but the well on the lot next door is 65’. The iron bacteria is common here; hence, the treatment with chlorine injection. To answer a question asked privately for public benefit, no, there is no chlorine taste as it’s removed by the charcoal filter past the sediment filter.

[Lee Schierer]

Jim does your charcoal filter back flush periodically? How long does it last?

[Jim Becker]

Jim does your charcoal filter back flush periodically? How long does it last?

I believe i t does as it’s “zero maintenance”, but quite large at about five feet tall with a digital display. The acid neutralizer we had at the old property back flushed, too.

[Ronald Blue]

Normally with "Sulphur" water air injection can work or a holding tank that's not pressurized and vents to atmosphere will allow the gas to basically rise to the top. You would need a second pump to pressurize the house plumbing. At least around here you can take a container of the nastiest smelliest Sulphur water and let it set for a couple hours and the smell is gone. A local well driller used an aeration pump on deep wells and it worked well. Line ran down to the pump and apparently the rising air bubbles brought the Sulphur gas with them. Unfortunately you never go what you are going to get with a bored well.

[Dom Garafalo]

Perhaps my solution can help others.

Our house has a well and for 40 years we tolerated the sulfur smell in our hot water. After I retired 15 years ago I decided to do some research on the problem and how to get rid of it.

What I found was to replace the standard anode in our hot water tank with a powered anode. Apparently, the technology has been around for many years and is used in many commercial and industrial applications. It eliminated the sulfur smell almost over night for us.

Our hot water system is essentially a Buderus oil fired boiler that heats hot water and circulates it through a stand alone Buderus hot water holding tank that has a anode in it.

I had to do some modifications to the Buderus hot water tank because the original anode rod was suspended by a threaded stud from a plate on the top of the tank. But all I had to do was drill a 1" or so hole in the mounting plate have a 3/4" threaded stainless steel pipe coupler welded to the top of the mounting plate and thread the new powered anode in to it. I believe a 3/4" pipe thread is how most standard anode rods install in most stand alone hot water tanks.

The powered anode that I have is from STOLTCO which I have no affiliation with.

Hope this helps someone else.

Thanks

[Chris Walls]

W had a similar problem , I installed a powered anode rod and have not had a problem since . Not to badly priced either.
Chris

[George Yetka]

We are on heavy iron water. apparently what comes with that is hydrogen sulfide which gives you that smell. With well water lots of people end up with this. It breeds in the warm water. An electronic anode helps for sure but You should at least yearly drain the HW tank and piping in the house and refill A standard works too but may need to be changed yearly.

Once a year maybe 2 times if not on septic
Introduce a cup or 2 of bleach or so into the system and run water to farthest faucet till you smell bleach and turn it off.
Then open each faucet in the house till you smell bleach.
Let this sit for 20 minutes.
Drain the whole thing and flush it all out.

You will be surprised with the amount of black stuff that comes out.