Johnsburg resident pays high price for improperly chlorinating his private well

This is a pitless adapter. Improperly chlorinate your well
and you could spend a lot of money replacing the pitless
adapter in your private Johnsburg well.

Bob pulls in the driveway of his Johnsburg home hops out of the car and goes inside. The kids are running and screaming and his youngest, 3-year-old Alyssa, catches him from the side tugging on his jacket. As he tries to make sense of the adolescent mayhem, Alyssa keeps saying, “Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.” Trying to get his attention.

Finally, accepting the idea that there’s just no chance of the house coming under control, he looked down at his daughter and said, “Yes, sweetie? What’s up?”

“The water broke, Daddy,” she said.

One thing Bob knew for sure was that his wife definitely was not expecting; Alyssa’s statement just didn’t make any sense. He looked Brenda, his wife, with a puzzled expression.

“We don’t have any water,” she said with a frown.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Brenda walked to the sink and lifted the handle on the faucet. Nothing happened. “I’ve already called the well guy. He’s out back looking at the well now.”

Almost as though on signal, there was a knock on the door. Bob opened the door and came face to face with another frown, this one from the well technician Bob’s wife had called. “We’ve got a problem,” the well technician said. “Your well pump is bad and it’s going to take some work to get it out of your well.”

“Why is that?” said Bob, a suspicious tone in his voice.

Sensing Bob’s suspicion, the well technician asked a probing question: “Have you chlorinated your own well?”

“Yeah,” barked Bob, as though that was a ridiculous question. He was rather proud of the money he had saved doing it himself and that he had taken the time to do it at all – a lot of homeowners with private wells didn’t seem to bother.

“I’m guessing you just opened the well and poured the chlorine in, right?” asked the well technician.

“Of course,” said Bob with exasperation creeping into his voice. “What’s wrong with that?’

“Let me show you something,” the well technician indicating that Bob should follow him outside. He led Bob to the back of his truck where he pulled a crusty old pipe fitting out from under a rack of tools and equipment.

“I keep this to show people when I service their wells,” said the well technician. “I try to show them before they need to replace their well pump. Unfortunately, I’ve never been out here before.”

“What’s this?” asked Bob looking at the pipe fitting in the well technician’s hands.

“This is a pitless adapter I removed from another customer’s house here in Johnsburg a couple years ago,” said the well technician. “I keep it around to show people what happens when they don’t chlorinate their wells properly. See all this corrosion around the thread?”

Bob nodded.

“This is what happens when you simply pour the chlorine into the well. It doesn’t play well with the threads on the pitless adapter,” the well technician said. “It took me quite a bit longer to pull the pump out because of that corrosion. I have to thread a pipe into the pitless adapter to pull the pump out. And, when the threads are all messed up, it cost the customer quite a bit more for me to get the pump out. It can cost $2,000 to replace the pitless adapter.

“It’s good that you chlorinated the well,” the well technician said. “Unfortunately, they didn’t warn you about this before you chlorinated your well.”