Podcast Q&A 4: “I have well water with a sulfur smell; what’s the best product to eliminate this for the whole house?”
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Hello, welcome to the Clean Water Made Easy Podcast Q&A. My name is Gerry Bulfin. I hope you’re doing well. I’m a WQA-certified Master Water Specialist and Water Treatment Contractor here in Santa Cruz, CA. Every week on our main podcast, we discuss various well water treatment systems and common water problems—like how to eliminate that unpleasant sulfur smell often found in well water. I also have these quick Q&A episodes to cover folks' questions.
We receive a large number of phone calls, e-mails, and chats on our website every day, so I pick the most interesting one and answer it.
So today, Sam contacted us through the chat on our website and asked:
“I have well water, and I have a sulfur smell. What’s the best product to eliminate this for the whole house? I was told the UV-sterilizer will work because it kills the bacteria that creates the sulfur smell.”
Sam, that’s a really good question. We have also had that question asked quite a few times before, and I can tell you unequivocally that UV sterilization is not the way to eliminate the hydrogen sulfide smell.
The thinking is that you get the sulfur smell, and it is usually from sulfur—or iron-related bacteria. So people are thinking, well, if I use the UV, that will get rid of the bacteria and get rid of the smell. However, it doesn’t really work that way. What’s happening is that these bacteria creating the hydrogen sulfide gas live in the well and in the pipes, and they give off this hydrogen sulfide gas, so we have to remove that.
It’s a good idea to disinfect the water as well to kill the bacteria, but you wouldn’t want to use UV light. UV light is very sensitive to the quality of the water.
If the water is turbid, meaning it has any color to it, or if it has deposits in it, which it will if you’ve got hydrogen sulfide, then it just doesn’t work. However, you could use UV as a final stage after you’ve removed the odor and filtered the water. You might want to have a water softener if your water is hard. Then, as a final stage, you could use a UV sterilizer to kill the bacteria, but it wouldn’t remove the odor.
So, we recommend the lowest-cost way to go for odor removal is a chlorinator. You chlorinate the water, and then you filter out the chlorine and odor with activated carbon. That is very reliable, and you get disinfected water, and the odor is gone. But some people don’t want to mess with the chlorine, and if you don’t want to, you could use aeration, where the water is aerated and filtered with activated carbon.
There’s also ozone gas, which is the most expensive and hardest to deal with, but it does work really well once you get it set up. It’s grea,t but it’s quite a bit more expensive than chlorination or aeration.
If you have questions about odor in the water, just feel free to give us a call, go to our website, CleanWaterStore.com, chat with us online, or personally e-mail me at GerryBulfin@cleanwaterstore.com.
