Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Shocking a well - effects on septic system?

You guys have collectively been a big help to me in this area, with smelly hot water etc.

We have had the analysis done and we have a combination of hard water and the bacteria to create the smelly water.

Softener is being installed soon, while we are doing things we are also replacing a 20 year old hot water heater.

We have been advised to shock the well, which seems straight forward to do. The question I asked, was by over chlorinating the well, then pumping it through all the house lines and into the septic system, will that have a negative effect by killing off the bacteria that keeps a septic system working right?

Any thoughts? The answer I got from the water treatment guy is we probably should dump some "bugs" into the tank when done to reactivate the septic. Followed by "but I am not a plumber/septic person".

Thoughts?

After flushing the lines it will help a lot to put some good bugs back in the tank .

The stuff that they use to shock pools works.
We have used yeast in the past.

I add bacteria to my septic system every time a flush after taking a dump.

Mix the bleach in a clean 5 gal bucket. Pour into well. Run a garden hose back into the well until you smell bleach from the hose, making a point to wash down the inside of the casing.

Sequentially run water through house lines from closest to P tank, to farthest. Let Cl water rest in lines 6 hours, overnight is better.

Then run the water through the outside hose for a few hours to clear the well.

The residual in the domestic plumbing will have little effect on septic.

Don't. Assuming your well casing is steel/iron, chlorine will promote corrosion on the casing walls.....your iron content will rise. Your softener will not filter that, but the addition of an iron filter will. =$$$$$

Regardless, you don't need to add bugs. Your contributions to the system will do that.

Double your probiotic intake......hehehehehehe.........

It won't affect the septic much at all.

I'd run the water through a hose out on the yard rather than run it through the house drain system though.

Flushing the pressure tank and the water heater has done us more good than “shocking” the well! We presently only add Clorox to our filter..... pre-pressure tank. This requires much less chlorine than “shocking” the well. Periodically flushing the tanks, has considerably lengthened the chlorine treatment time frames! memtb

From our experience I would say it will have a terrible affect on the septic. Be sure to add a treatment every two weeks after that for awhile. The store bought stuff wasn't good enough to keeps ours going. We got some septic treatment from our septic guy he calls "High Count". It seems to be working.

Shocking a well?

Did you get this advice from a hydrogeologist?

Our wells here in Tn in the fractured St Louis limestone formation are continually recharged by new inflow from fissures in the aquifer. That only makes common sense.

I have no idea what your hydrogeology is like there, sand? Gravel? How deep? How near to your septic?

I only could reasonably see you chemically shocking would be a cistern.

The question still remains, are you drinking what you’re shîtting? With or without sodium hypochlorite.

I’m intrigued.

My well driller would lose his schit.

As for the septic, I dump bleachy mop water down the drain and clean the toilets with bleach.

Never any problems with my septic, never needed pumping in 28 years so far. I also have 30 minute Armour and Nolin series soils.

Septic tanks are pretty resilient.

If one has crap growing in the well bore it is the only to get it cleaned up.

It can live on casing walls and in water lines for a long time.

It is true that water underground flows like surface water the algae will need to be treated or the water is not fit for use by normal folks.

If your casing is not about two feet above ground it invites insects to crawl in and that can cause coliform. Is this what kind of bacteria you have? Like slumlord said bleach goes in your septic alot so I wouldnt worry about that.

By pouring liquid bleach down our pitiless adapter I corroded the cast plug so tight we had to replace the entire adapter.

Use a hose to get by that.

Contact time is more important than concentration.

High concentrations of Cl can cause bacteria to encapsulate in a protein barrier and be resistant to disinfection.

Thanks for the help!

The person that was here is a water treatment person. The water test showed negative for e Coli and Coliform

the smell is from hydrogen sulfide gas, the bacteria turned the toilet tanks black with a "slime" on the walls of them.

We originally had someone pull the anode rod as that worked in a house we were renting, but the water heater is 20 years old, there was literally no anode rod left!

The water treament person said shocking wells here is fairly normal in this part of WY (Buffalo)

Well casing is about 18-24 inches above ground

I worked for a well and pump outfit many years ago. We did quite a few chlorine treatments on wells in the area due to iron bacteria. We always pumped it to waste for 24 hours after the treatment before we hooked the home back up to well water. I never heard of an issue with the septic tanks by doing that. And we used the pool chlorine instead of the household stuff. The owner would remove the pump and had surge plates he could put on his drilling tools that would force the chlorine back into the formation and provided the owners with somewhat longer term protection. I doubt if you're using just household chlorine that it would have any serious impact on your septic.

Iron oxidizing bacteria creating a biofilm. Controlling this often requires a regular treatment schedule, perhaps annually.