How to Shock Chlorinate and Sanitize your Water Well Clean Water Made Easy Podcast

In this episode, I discuss how to shock chlorinate and sanitize your well with chlorine bleach.  This is sometimes referred to as “shock chlorinate” because it uses a high dose of bleach to kill bacteria, eliminate odors and oxidize iron and other contaminants.   I also go over why it is important to not add too much bleach, or too little bleach and other safety steps to follow.

What You’ll Hear in this Episode

1. What is shock chlorination?

2. Testing for bacteria and other contamination

3. Reasons for shock chlorinating your well

4. The Right Procedure in chlorinating your well yourself

5. Precautions to take in chlorinating your well yourself

6. What kind of chlorine to use in shock chlorinating your well

7. How to find a certified well contractor in your area

8. Why it’s important to mix and add the chlorine in a well ventilated area

9. Identifying the source of well contamination

10. When to call a professional well contractor

11. When is it safe to use the water again after chlorination

12. Benefits of shock chlorinating your well

 



Transcript

Hello! Thanks again for tuning in into the podcast. Gerry Bulfin here. I am a water treatment contractor, WQA- Certified Master Water Specialist. I hope you’re having a great day, everything’s going great for you and your water.

In this podcast series, I’m giving useful, easy to follow tips and information. Mostly all about well water, well water treatment systems, and how to improve the quality of your well water.

Free Download of Guide

Today’s episode we’re going to cover the basics of how to shock chlorinate and sanitize your well, and also how to sanitize pipe lines and storage tanks. I actually have a free guide for this podcast called How to Shock Chlorinate wells, pipe lines, storage tanks and systems. This is an easy to follow guide, has step by step lists of what to do, as well as very useful charts to show you how much chlorine bleach pellets or powder to add based on the size and depth of your well.

I’m offering that free to listeners in this podcast and you can get your guide by texting the word, SHOCKGUIDE, just one word to 44222 or go to cleanwaterstore.com/podcast. You can find it there. So just text the word SHOCKGUIDE to 44222 and we’ll get that going to you.

Shock Chlorination

So what is shock chlorination? Well, shock chlorination means that you’re adding sufficient bleach (which bleach is liquid sodium hypochlorite, or if it’s powdered bleach or pellets, it’s calcium hypochlorite) to raise the chlorine concentration inside the well, tank or pipe line to between 200 and 300 parts of per million. This kills bacteria and sanitizes the well. That’s the main reason. It’s also good for odors as well. But most people shock chlorinate the well to sanitize it and to kill bacteria.

The city water has maybe somewhere between .2 and 2 parts of per million of chlorine. So, shock chlorinate means you’re adding a high amount of chlorine, usually two to three hundred parts of per million. And if you leave it there long enough, it will kill the bacteria typically.

For best results the chlorine level must be maintained in your well for 6 – 12 hours and it helps if the pH is between 5 and 7. If you have a very high pH, if your pH is 8/8.5 it doesn’t work as well, it’s much less effective. So it doesn’t hurt to check the pH.

Most of the time the pH is around neutral but there are a lot of cases where the well water pH is high and then the shock chlorination is not as effective, unless you add some citric acid or something to lower the pH, but we’ll get into that in a minute.

So after 12 hours, at least 6 hours or up to 12 hours after you added the chlorine, you test it again for chlorine. If you find you have less than ten parts of per million, then you repeat the procedure. So,