Stamey

Last night I had a galvanized fitting in my system rot through and I found myself patching the plumbing last night in the basement.
Below you will see one of the pieces of pipe I removed.



I know I have high iron content in my water because of the extremely deep well I have. I have an iron filter and a water softener. The water looks OK coming out of the tap most of the time, but the toilet still stains.
The pipe you see pictured is before the iron filter and the water softener.
I have no known pressure or flow problems at this time, if you can believe that.
I do not know the extent of this in pipes after the water softener, water heater, etc.

My questions are, can I get this rust buildup flushed out of the plumbing? If so, is it something I can do, or will I need to hire someone to do it?
If not, what are my options?

Thanks,
Chris

apache

Im not an expert in drinking water, I work from the other end if ya know what I mean. Some of the guys I work with have potable water certification and we were talking about our wells iron bacteria problem. It was recomended we chlorinate the well and let it sit. If you have a storage tank youll be OK, youll have to flush the system after. We never did it, so im not sure what dosage of CL2 you`ll need. Ya might try callin a well co or water softner co, possibly even your county public works dept might be able to give you some help. The pipes......???? man, I hope thats not what my arteries look like from all the swell food I eat
BTW, how deep is deep? were at 900+ feet for 3 gpm. A few miles over they can go 50' and get 800gpm Wish we had that, Id dig me a Bass pond

Stamey

By deep, I mean 250+ feet (estimate I received from the previous owner). That's pretty deep by Virginia standards. Not much desert here.
The iron is so bad though, the creak on the back of my property has orange iron "fuzz" in it. There's just a load of iron in my area.

Chris

zulusafari

Yeah, looks like an iron bacteria/hard water scale. I don't know about flushing back through the pies to the well, as most descalers I know of aren't suited for well systems. At work (also the OTHER end of the system) we route out lines like that with miniature jetting equipment. Some water blasting companies can do this work. Makes quite the mess, though. What size pipe is that? 3/4"? Many people have had better luck switching to PVC plumbing or Copper, as the galvanised Iron piping definitely scales up much worse.

MnTom

Far as I know, there is not anything to descale your pipes in your house. Around here we wind up replumbing a house to take care of the problem. Galvanized pipes are a problem no matter where you are.
Tom

Stamey

My piping is mostly 3/4 copper. I am replacing the galvanized fitting with a brass fitting, and I have to use galvanized for my outside, frost proof spicket, but other than that, copper is what I have.

Thanks,
Chris

ArkansasRam

Stamey

I have a friend in the Chicago area that is real good at this type of water treatment, I had a friend in Mich. with terrible water losts of iron. All I know is he used some type of filtering and injected air from a very small compressor through a venturi, worked great. If you don't mind a long distance call, you may contact him. His name is Paul Mcquire tell him Mark Allen told you to call. He's a great guy and real free with any info to help anybody, does't care if you do it yourself. His number is 815-693-6768. Good luck

Stamey

ArkansasRam,
Was he trying to clean out the pipes, or get his water drinkable? I have talked to a couple of licensed plumbers now, and neither has ever heard of any way to clean out copper pies this small. They said they did not know of any chemicals that could help either.
Regardless, thanks for the info.
I will try to call him tomorrow.

Thanks,
Chris

duner

that looks like schedule 20 pipe. if you house is piped with 20 you need to replumb the system anyway. i know of nothing that can be used to clean potable water supply piping. good luck

Hemi Cat

If you could clean it, the scale will have little pits rusted into the pipe and start leaking when company arrives or just after you leave for a 2 week vacation. The best thing to do is bite the bullit and replace it and forget it.
That rust looks pretty bad. Do you have any toxic waste dumps close by?

Stamey

Don't pay any attention to the outside of the pipe in the pic. It still has solder film on it and looks silver. It really is copper pipe though.
No waste dumps that I am aware of. I think I am sitting over an iron mine though.

Thanks,
Chris

ArkansasRam

Acid would be the only to clean out the iron but you wouldn't have anything left and you couldn't use the water for personal use if it did work. The info I gave you was for the future pipe after it is replaced. The system I told you about is not very expensive to buy and install. Hope this helps and you have better luck. Mark

Stamey

10-4. Thanks again.

Chris