Is it time to test and chlorinate your well?

What kind of water are you bringing into your home? Is it safe, clean and odor free?

The enemy lurking, waiting for a chance to contaminate your water is known as bacteria. It assaults your water supply and moves through your house in the pipes that carry this vital resource.

Water is an essential element in your home. You use it to bathe, cook and clean. Most importantly, you and your loved ones consume it – allow it to enter your bodies where it plays a vital role in the maintenance of good health. But, what if the water is tainted, if it contains toxic elements? Clearly, that’s not good.

If you have city water, the hope is that the city is doing a good job keeping the water safe and clean. In the process, they probably help to improve the taste while removing any negative odor. But, if you have a private well providing water to your home, you can’t count on municipal workers to do that job. The burden falls on your shoulders.

Where the city falls short, you might call in a water treatment company to help. Through filters and softeners they will help to improve the quality of the water in your home. With a private well, however, a really good place to start is at the source. In other words, proper well maintenance is the first step to ensuring good water quality in your home.

Water well maintenance includes ensuring that your well’s delivery system is up to par – that the pump works properly, the well tank is properly charged, the electronics are in good condition and the well cap is sealed so foreign insects and matter can’t get in. Proper water well maintenance also includes annual tests and chlorination of your well.

You may be tempted to chlorinate your well yourself. A word of caution in this regard: if you don’t do it right you can cause damage to parts of the pump, tank and electronic connections. Your best bet is probably to call in an expert, such as John Matthesius with McHenry Water Well & Pump.

One aspect of John’s job that he enjoys the most is the good feeling he gets knowing he’s helped to ensure that his customers are drinking and using safe and healthy water. Well maintenance is extremely cost effective. On the other hand, avoiding timely well maintenance can prove very expensive.

Quality well technicians will brave arctic cold to get your water flowing

You can hear the wind howling and the frost is creeping across your window. The backyard looks like an arctic landscape as the snow swirls and blows. It’s cold outside and it’s good to be indoors. Your plan is to just wrap yourself in a comforter and settle down with a cup of cocoa and a good book.

In the kitchen, you take the teapot off the stove and carry it to the sink. You hold it under the faucet as you glance out the kitchen window and remind yourself how fortunate you are for central heat. Then, you lift the lever and … nothing. You try again. This time you hear a bang and a wheeze and some rusty powder puffs out of the faucet.

You look under the sink in the hope something simple and easy to fix is responsible for the unexpected disruption in the on-demand flow of water. But, under the sink, everything looks fine. In other words, it looks the same way it does any other time you look under the sink.

You think to yourself, “I’d better try the bathroom sink” but you receive the same response from the faucet there. Even the bathtub and utility tubs are coughing dry powder instead dispensing water.

You call a friend who knows a little about maintaining a home. After a couple of unsuccessful suggestions, your friend recommends that you call in an expert. You have well water so you need to call in a well technician.

Hopefully, you’ll call a well company like McHenry Water Well & Pump. You need someone who knows wells and well pumps inside and out. You need someone who can fix your well on a good day but is also willing to come out and fix your well when it’s 10-below zero and the wind is making it feel like 50 below.

On a day such as this, when that well technician arrives, you watch from the warmth indoors as the well technician leans against the blowing wind and fights his or her way out to your well. Maybe, it’s a simple wiring issue and your water is quickly flowing again. Then again, it could be the well pump or the well tank, or both.

In this scenario, the work is a bit more involved. That well technician will be out there fighting the elements for a couple of hours so you can have fresh, clean water indoors while you huddle in the heat.

Ask yourself, what would you say if you called a well maintenance or repair company and they said, “I’m sorry, it’s too cold out today. Why don’t you call back when it’s a little warmer?”

A quality well repair and maintenance technician knows there are hot days when they repair and maintain wells and there are cold days – sometimes, very, very cold days. It comes with the territory. Of course, for folks like those at McHenry Water Well & Pump, it warms their hearts when they see the smile on your face knowing your water is fresh, clean and running again.

For more information about McHenry Water Well & Pump, call 815-403-3333 or visit: www.mchenrywellandpump.com.

Well chlorination is vital – call in an expert to do the job right

If your home or office has well water, you probably know well maintenance is critical. That includes periodic chlorination of the well.

Well chlorination is vital because the well can become contaminated with bacteria and pathogens. Well chlorination is the answer though, if it’s done wrong, it can also cause problems.

You can choose between liquid, granular or tablet chlorine. However, there is another choice, a new product called Sterilene. Though not as widely available, it mixes easily with water, has no shelf life concerns, there is no premixing required to control PH, it is non-oxidative, creates no corrosive fumes during use, is NSF 60 certified and is 200 times as effective as other forms of chlorine. It’s also competitively priced.

The next question is whether you’ll chlorinate the well yourself or call in an expert, such as the experts with McHenry Water Well & Pump. You may want to give this question serious thought. If not done properly, you could clog the intake on your well pump and damage the pit-less adapter. It’s even possible to damage your plumbing. A qualified well technician will chlorinate your well safely, properly and without causing any costly problems.

Proper well chlorination, done on a timely basis, is the best way to ensure that you have steady access to pure, clean and safe water. And, properly done, it will provide you with a well that operates at optimal condition for the long haul. Well chlorination is relatively inexpensive. It’s also imperative to avoiding unnecessary repair bills.