Still Thinking About My Well

My well water has remained clear since my little episode of brown tinged water last weekend. My little episode occurred briefly first thing in the morning. I ran the water for a couple of minutes, but it stayed discolored. I turned on the hose and watered my flowers in front. The water cleared up while I was doing that.

Even though the problem has resolved itself and I know I do not have coliform bacteria in my water, some fault in the well or pump system caused this. My well and the equipment are almost 15 years old. I called Monticello Pump Service in Manassas and Jason was going to pass my house on his way back to Manassas so he stopped by to take a quick look at my equipment.

The first thing Jason pointed out to me after we turned on a couple of taps to run the pump, is the most obvious thing I had missed. My pressure gauge was not working. The pump, however, was pulling a steady 7.5 amps without so much as a flutter. Though the pressure gauge was not working the pressure switch, which I had checked previously, was working fine and the pressure tank was still also working fine delivering water throughout the house. The pressure gauge does not control the pressure gauge it is just an indicator (like the gas gauge in your car).

Monticello Pump Service is a licensed well service company that participates in the Virginia Tech “Well Check” program. Though, they have a 4” camera that could go down the well, it requires pulling the pump and being without water for 48 hours to get a good view. We discussed what it could have been to cause the brown water episode. Jason brought up the California earthquakes.

A 6.4 magnitude earth quake hit near Ridgecrest, CA on Thursday and a larger 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit near Death Valley on Friday. I took a look at the USGS Groundwater Monitoring System wells and there was indeed some change associated with the nearby monitoring well but the very minor impact I saw would not necessarily been seen in the time around the earthquakes. The much larger change recorded Sunday left me wondering how to interpret this data or if it was unrelated to my minor discolored water incident. This is the provisional graph from the well closest to my house.

from USGS VA Water Data

Hydro-geologic responses to earthquakes have been observed to occur both in the area of the earthquake and thousands of miles from the earthquake epicenter. Earthquakes impact groundwater the most commonly observed impact is to water wells. Some well have been observed to become turbid or muddy, some have run dry or had an increase in flow or water level. The most common type of observed ground-water response is an instantaneous water-level fall or rise and can occur near or far from the epicenter of the quake. This could cause the pump to "burp." Recovery to the pre-earthquake water level can be so rapid as to be almost unnoticeable, or it may take as long as several days or months. 

Overall, I just do not know what could have caused the small burp and brief episode of slightly discolored water. It may be nothing- a transient expression of the series of earthquakes that have appeared recently, or the first symptom of an aging pump and pressure tank. I will never know I am not inclined to repair the pressure gauge on a 15 year old pressure tank. Now, I am considering if I should just go ahead and replace the pressure tank and piping this year and consider moving up the replacement of my pump and wiring to next year. I am not inclined to wait for my well components to fail before I replace them.