Last night as I left work, I told my fellow colleagues that we were staying in Boulder last night because we were “shocking” our well. To which I received some raised raised browsand baffled looks.
Until ten years ago, I would have been one of those people. I grew up in the midwest suburbs outside of St. Louis, where things were provided like trash pick-up, public water and sewer. You paid a monthly bill to get those services provided to you. I didn’t know anything about septic holding tanks or well systems or how they worked.
I first got acquainted with this when purchasing our Nederland home, and our realtor told us we needed to get the well tested. The well tested for what?
Turns out wells can be breeding grounds for all kinds of bacteria because of the leaves and decaying matter on the ground that break down and seep into the well. Depending on what’s in the well, bacteria can be fairly harmless or you can get forms of bacteria like e. coli that can be very dangerous.
Most mountain residents shock their wells once a year to insure healthy drinking water.
What does “shocking” a well entail? Well, despite visions of a defibrillator and electrical current, it doesn’t involve too much. Basically, you buy some Chlorox chlorine bleach, figure out how much capacity your well holds, and combine five gallons of water with 1-2 gallons of bleach. Your pour it down the well, wait a few hours, run the indoor taps until you smell chlorine.
Then you let the bleach “percolate” in the system to disinfect it of any bacteria for 12-24 hours. Because you can’t use any water at this time, we find it best to go camp, while this is happening. I find myself defaulting to turning on water to wash hands or other things without thinking, so it’s best to just not be there. After the 12-24 hours, you run the outside taps/hoses until the water no longer smells like chlorine, then run the inside taps for the same. Voila! You now have a disinfected, clean water supply for the next year.
The things you learn while living in the mountains — that you might have spent your whole life living in ignorant bliss….
