Well Water Problems
Black Water and Black Specks in Water: What's Causing It
Black specks are usually manganese — the EPA sets its aesthetic limit at just 0.05 mg/L, twenty times stricter than iron, because it stains black at t…
Rusty, smelly, cloudy or metallic well water — what the color, smell and taste really mean, and which treatment fixes each one.
Black specks are usually manganese — the EPA sets its aesthetic limit at just 0.05 mg/L, twenty times stricter than iron, because it stains black at t…
A chlorine or pool smell means free chlorine you can taste, typically well under the EPA's 4 mg/L maximum residual disinfectant level. Most people not…
Milky-white cloudiness almost always means tiny air bubbles, and the test is watching a glass clear from the bottom up within 1–2 minutes as bubbles r…
Hard water is dissolved calcium and magnesium, measured in grains per gallon (gpg). Water crosses into "hard" at 7 gpg (about 120 mg/L) and "very hard…
Iron staining starts around 0.3 mg/L (the EPA aesthetic threshold) and gets ugly past 1 mg/L. Below about 1–3 mg/L of dissolved iron, a good water sof…
You can measure hardness, pH, chlorine, iron and rough TDS at home with test strips and a $15 pocket meter in about ten minutes. But bacteria, nitrate…
Manganese stains hard at the EPA aesthetic limit of 0.05 mg/L and has a separate lifetime health advisory of 0.3 mg/L. Below roughly 0.5 mg/L a water …
A metallic taste means dissolved metal, and there are four usual suspects: iron (tastes noticeable above the 0.3 mg/L aesthetic limit), copper leachin…
Orange well water is almost always iron — the EPA flags staining above 0.3 mg/L — usually with a supporting cast. A shade drifting toward brown hints …
Rust color is oxidized (ferric) iron — the visible, particle form. Where it comes from decides the fix: a corroding steel or galvanized pipe (often ju…
A salty taste almost always points to chloride climbing past 250 mg/L (the EPA aesthetic limit) or sodium creeping over roughly 200 mg/L. A softener w…
That odor is hydrogen sulfide gas (H₂S) dissolving into your water. A human nose picks it up at roughly 0.5 parts per million (ppm) and finds it hard …
Pale-yellow well water is usually either tannins (dissolved organic matter from decaying leaves and peat, harmless but stubborn) or low-level iron/man…