Smelly Water

The new and smaller house was actually move in ready when we bought it. But since our present residence has not sold, and probably will not sell for some time, we decided to make the desired modifications prior to moving. The Boss has stripped all the wallpaper and painted. I have installed a filtered drinking water system to the kitchen, ran plumbing and installed a utility sink in the basement laundry area, and partially set up my reloading and armory room. Carpet has now been ordered. Hard wood flooring sounds like living in a gymnasium.

The well water there is actually good for this general area. There is almost no sediment coming from the well and the iron content is what I consider unusually low, though a water softener is required. The problem is the terrible smell from the hot water, but not the cold. I did some research and found 2 possible solutions to this.

One theory is that the smell is from a harmless bacteria in the water. The waste from the bacteria smells bad when heated with a reaction from the anode in the electric heater. The simple, and less expensive, solution is to remove the anode from the heater. My son helped me do that Sunday. I wouldn't have guessed that would be such a hard thing to do. I then put chlorine bleach in the tank and refilled to kill anything left. Unfortunately, this old Brain forgot that when removing a part of the heater a plug is needed to replace it. Last night I put the plug in and ran chlorinated water through all the hot water supply pipes. This evening I flushed all that out and and turned the heater back on. I'll find out this weekend if that solved the problem.

The other theory is the presence of manganese in the water which would need to be filtered. There are back wash filters on the market designed to get rid of manganese, iron and sulfur. I hope the first trial works, because those filter systems are a bit pricey. With my maximum flow rate one unit will cost $950.