What time is it? In Crystal Lake, it’s time to chlorinate

Spring time in Crystal Lake is time to chlorinate your well.

The snow is gone from the yard around your Crystal Lake home. Well, it’s gone for now (with the crazy weather we’ve seen this Spring, who knows when the snow will return). With the most recent snow having melted away you may dare to head outdoors and do some Spring cleaning and gardening. You may also want to have your well inspected and chlorinated.

A well inspection will ensure that your water-well system is operating at its peak performance. It can also identify problems that could cause your well system to stop providing water for your Crystal Lake home. It can even help extend the life of your well system putting off that inevitable time when you have to open your wallet wide to fix and replace parts of your well system, such as the pump.

Well chlorination of your Crystal Lake home, on the other hand, is focused on ensuring that the water you and your loved ones consume, and use is safe and healthy. Chlorination helps to eliminate elements in the water. Chlorination disinfects the well. It kills harmful and disease-causing bacteria in the well.

While having the well chlorinated, you may also want to send a sample of your water out for testing. A laboratory can ensure the water is safe to drink in all respects.

Calling in a qualified well technician will allow you to go about your Spring cleaning and gardening while someone else takes care of your well and does the job properly (many people, while chlorinating their own wells, damage the well equipment by adding the chlorine the wrong way).

With your well chlorinated, you’ll have safe water to drink and use inside your Crystal Lake home while looking out the window at the Spring flowers you’ve planted.

Well cap seal keeps Spring Grove surface water safely out of your well

But don’t forget to chlorinate your well, too

Can you see the well cap hiding in the landscaping?
Using landscaping to hide your Spring Grove well
cap isn't always a good idea.

Would you take a glass from the kitchen and dip it in a puddle out behind your Spring Grove home for a drink of water? Of course not. There are all kinds of potential problems with drinking the water off the ground. This is why it’s important to maintain a separation from surface water and the water in your well. Keep in mind that the well pump can actually suck surface water through the cap vent if the water gets too close.

At first blush, it’s easy to see that the water in a puddle is unsavory as a refreshment. Scoop it into a glass and you’ll quickly notice that, rather than the clear, fresh water from the tap, the glass of surface water is dirty. There’s stuff in there – all kinds of stuff.

To get to the puddle, the water was probably run across the surface of the ground. In the process, it absorbed a certain amount of dirt particles and more. It may have passed where the dog has done its business. If not the dog, even the squirrels living in a nearby tree may have contributed to the contaminants in the water.

This makes for unhealthy mix. Dysentery is a likely outcome. But there are other potentially unhealthy items you’ll find in surface water. For instance, parasites may abound in a glass of water scooped from a puddle in your backyard. In some cases, the problem is exasperated because homeowners and business owners terrace around the well cap. Their efforts to use landscaping to hide the well cap actually brings the surface water up closer to the well cap.

These are less likely but potential problems with your well water, too. This is why you should chlorinate your well at least once each year. You should also have your well water tested. A laboratory can confirm that your water is safe for consumption.

Assuming you chlorinate your well once a year, the next step to ensuring its quality is to keep that surface water out of the well. This is why, under the well head you see in your Spring Grove backyard, you’ll find a well cap. Less apparent, from a glance, is the seal between the well cap and the well pipe. That seal is a critical part of your well.

As Spring Grove enters the spring season, with melting snow and rains that are often heavier this time of year, the water around your well cap can reach a level where the water could get past the well cap, assuming the seal is not secure.

The way to make sure that the well seal is in good condition is to have it checked. And, it just happens that checking the seal on a well cap is part of the process when chlorinating a well. In other words, you can call a well technician out to chlorinate your well and have the seal of your well cap checked at the same time.

Spring Grove well pumps can fail in the middle of winter, too

But, well maintenance can extend the life of your well pump

Even in the middle of winter, your Spring Grove
well pump can fail. Maintenance is the key to
avoiding this problem.

One good thing about winter is that, when the temperature falls in Spring Grove, you never have to worry about your well pump failing. When the ground is covered with snow, you never have to worry, either. Of course, there’s only one problem with these statements; they’re both patently false.

A well pump doesn’t care what the temperature is. The well pump in the ground outside your Spring Grove home doesn’t care if there’s no snow, an inch of snow or 2-feet of snow; if the pump will fail the weather won’t have an appreciable influence on the matter.

The problem with a well pump failing in winter is that a well technician has to work on your well, replacing the pump, when water exposed to the air will freeze. And, in the winter, if there is snow, particularly if there is 2-feet of snow, the well technician has to get through the snow to get to your well head.

Getting through 2-feet of snow to replace a well pump starts with knowing where to dig out the snow. Assuming you have a rough idea where the wellhead is will narrow the search. Otherwise, the well technician will have to dig holes in the general area until they find your well head.

Considering the difficulty finding a wellhead when the snow is deep, it might be worth it to take a couple measurements before the snow flies. Measure from two fixed positions relative to the wellhead. For instance, it might be 6’9” from a fence post on one side of the wellhead and 4’11” from the trunk of a tree in the other direction.

By using those measurements, a well technician can quickly triangulate and find the wellhead. That will help, should your well pump fail in the winter time. But, the well technician will still have to dig under the snow. And they’ll still need to deal with the cold. That’s just the way it is, if your well pump fails in the depths of a cold, cold, snowy winter.

Keep in mind that, when the well pump fails, you won’t have any water from your plumbing. One way to avoid having your well pump fail at an inopportune moment is to maintain your well. If you haven’t thought about it, you can even do that during the winter.

Well maintenance can help to extend the life of your well pump, and other parts of the well system. It’s a great way to avoid having your Spring Grove well pump fail in the middle winter.

It’s winter but you can still chlorinate your Spring Grove well

Yes, you can chlorinate your
Spring Grove well in winter.

Officially, another Spring Grove winter is only a couple weeks away. Unofficially, you may have concluded it’s already here. While it’s frigid outdoors, you’ve noticed that your home’s well water is smelling a little funny. Or, maybe you’ve notice that the color of the water is tinted slightly brown. Or, maybe you’ve just realized you haven’t had your well water chlorinated in a while. Now the question is whether you can chlorinate your well in winter?

You could buy some chlorine, bundle up, run a hose outside and chlorinate your well yourself. Expect to be uncomfortable. But, if you dress with layers, you won’t get too cold, well, unless your clothes get wet, which is a distinct possibility. About now, you may be reconsidering the idea. But, there’s another reason you might not want to chlorinate your own well.

When someone who is not a well technician chlorinates their well, they often do so improperly, which can have costly, long-term side effects. What happens is that, if the chlorination isn’t done properly, the chlorine can damage parts of your well system. You might not realize that the damage was done, at least, not until a well technician has to replace your well pump. The well technician will notice the problem and you’ll notice on the bill you receive when the work is done.

But, why not chlorinate your Spring Grove well in winter?

You can chlorinate your well in the winter. That’s not the issue. The question is whether you want to. You may not want to because, in the winter when the temperature is low, as you know, water freezes. Once the well is chlorinated, your well technician will flush the well. Along with waiting 24 hours to drink, bathe or do laundry with your well water, there’s a good chance the flushing will leave you with an ice-skating rink out in your yard. In general, it’s more of a mess working with water that freezes.

You can still chlorinate your well in winter, and qualified well technicians are used to working under these conditions. But, you may find more peace of mind knowing the well chlorination won’t cause all that frozen mess.

And, yes, you could put some skates on and use the frozen water in the yard for a skating rink. But, if you want to ice skate this winter, you’ll find better ice at an indoor ice-skating rink in the area, such as the Crystal Lake Ice House, which isn’t too far from Spring Grove.

Lightning is Mother Nature’s secret weapon against Barrington wells

This is what lightning can do to your car in Barrington.
In this case, the lightning also took out the well pump.

Lightning is a potential game changer when it comes to your Barrington well pump. Let’s suppose you’re one of those people who is fastidious about maintaining your well pump and well system; in other words, you have a well technician check the pump, adjust the pressure in the well tank, look over the wiring and components and then chlorinate the well annually.

You know the importance of maintenance and how, in the long run, it will extend the life of your well pump and well system and save you far more than you’ll spend on maintenance. That includes avoiding the emergency rate of having a well technician come out in the middle of the night because your well system isn’t proving water to your home. But, that doesn’t absolutely guarantee you won’t have trouble with your Barrington well.

The unfortunate reality is that Mother Nature is the potential wild card in terms of maintaining your well system.

The damage to this Barrington well pump isn't as visibly
apparent. But, the lightning did destroy this well pump, too.

A well system if fairly impervious from most of the weapons at Mother Nature’s disposal. A well pump head can withstand winds from the most powerful hurricane. Fortunately, hurricanes are not common in Barrington. But, we do have tornadoes in the area and well pumps will do well with those winds, too, though items caught up in the wind could damage a wellhead.

Floods won’t necessarily damage the wellhead. However, floodwater could get past the well cap and contaminate the well water. This will require testing, chlorinating and treating the water. But there is one arrow in Mother Nature’s quiver that can do substantial damage to a well pump if it hits the wellhead – lightning.

Lightning can fry the electronics in the wellhead and running down to the pump. It can burn out the pump or damage the well liner.

Here's another view of the car that was burned up after
it was hit by lightning.

Lightning is powerful. It can reach 100 million volts of electricity with about 30,000 amps. It can reach temperatures of 54,000 degrees. THAT’S SIX TIMES HOTTER THAN THE SUN!!!

Obviously, designing a well pump that is impervious to lightning is quite a trick. And, when lightning strikes, there’s no guarantee that the damage inflicted will be confined to the well pump. Other items in the area can also suffer. The lightning can damage trees, start cars or homes on fire.

This is all rather disturbing to contemplate. Fortunately, these lightning strikes are rare. They happen but they don’t happen often.

How much water does your Barrington well provide?

How much water does your Barrington well provide?
You might be surprised.

A 55-gallon drum stands 33-and-a-half-inches tall and has an inside diameter of 22-and-a-half inches. In a day, the average family in America uses enough water to nearly fill six of these containers. That’s a lot of water. It means that the well out behind your Barrington home has a big job to do every day.

How much water is that really? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that the average American family uses 300 gallons of water every day. Where your Barrington family compares to that average has a lot to do with how many people are in your family. The average family in the U.S. is 2.54 people. You may have three or four, or even more, in your family.

If your family does use 300 gallons of water each day that works out to …

• 2,100 gallons per week
• 109,500 gallons per year
• Nearly 1,991 55-gallon barrels of water per year.

Have you ever really thought of how much you expect from your well system? That’s a lot of work. And, how has your well done?

If you’re like most people, your well quietly and consistently delivers all the water you demand, and for all of your purposes. Here is a pie chart of how most of us use our water:

With that big of a job, it’s really incredible that well systems perform so incredibly and reliably. Of course, it also makes sense that you can’t expect your well to keep your Barrington home provided with water without the risk that your well system would break down. It also makes sense, therefore, that annual maintenance of your well system is a very, very good idea. Maintenance will help you keep the water flowing while also keeping the cost of operation at a minimum.

Are insects doing the backstroke in your North Barrington well water?

Do you want to think about insects swimming in
your North Barrington well water? Probably not.

Would you enjoy a glass of water knowing that, a short time before you drank it, an earwig was doing the backstroke in your glass? Of course not. This is why the well out behind your North Barrington home has a cap on top.

The cap on top of your well is designed to keep bugs out, as well as contaminated standing water on the surface of the ground. The well cap is sealed to ensure bugs and standing water don’t get in. The seal can even, potentially, keep water out if there is flooding.

Just as you wouldn’t want a bug swimming in the glass of water you drink, you wouldn’t go out back and scoop up a glass of water from your North Barrington yard for a drink. It’s filthy. Who knows what’s in it, starting with the potential for bacteria and insects.

Obviously, the well cap and its seal are important components of your well system. This is why, when you have your well inspected, the well technician doesn’t just check the electronics, the charge in the well tank, and the operation of the well pump. They also check the quality of the water in your well. And, they check the well cap and its seal.

Most wellheads extend up from the ground a sufficient distance so that standing water, and flood water, are unlikely to rise to that level. However, if you’ve allowed debris to pile up around the wellhead, insects may find it more tempting to test your well cap’s seal. It’s a good idea to keep the area around your well head, and well cap, clear.

If you do have an infestation of insects in your well, a well technician will have to flush the pressure tank and hot water tank. They’ll have to remove insect parts and eggs from filters, faucet aerators, showerheads and anywhere else where the bugs have had access. Then, they’ll have to disinfect the well and water system. With an infestation or bacteria, they may have to do this more than once. Until they’re done, however, you could be drinking water with insects and bacteria.

The best way to ensure that bugs and bacteria aren’t making a home in the well water you drink, bath in and use around the house is to have your North Barrington well system inspected and chlorinated annually. With the winter approaching, this is a good time now.