[jazzy]

I've had this well for 7 years. About a month ago we had about 6-7 inches of snow. Shortly after the snow my water started looking reddish like mud was getting mixed in. Since then we have had several days of rain at a time with only 1-2 days of dry between. My well water, both hot and cold, has a yellowish color to it. If I wash white clothes they come out looking rusted. Any idea on what may be causing this or how to fix? I did put an in line sedament filter on the line prior to the yellow color.

[lilypotter2009]

Ok, ours is yellow most of the time. When our softener and rust removal system is working well, it is nice and clear, although we do get the sulfur smell at times. I don't want to say its rust until you get a good lab to analyze it for you but that is my guess. If its some other type of thing like tannins hopefully a good lab will let you know. If you have a shallow well, it could be lots of things, a good deep well that taps into something other than ground water may well only have rust and a softener and rust removal will fix you up. In the mean time, don't wash any whites or use bleach in your wash water as if it is rust, the bleach will precipitate the rust out onto whatever you are washing and lots of stuff will turn that nice yellow color. So get it analyzed for everything and then pick your in home treatment options. My guess is you can get by with around 2 to 5 thousand dollar investment to fix your water. If it has bacteriological contaminants then you will want to super chlorinate, flush your system and then re-test. You may easily have both contaminants and sometimes more, testing will let you know what you have. Good luck.

[WaterTech]

Test for iron first. If there is no iron, then you may have iron bacteria, which may require chlorination.