# Well water clorination system questions



## scrupul0us (Apr 12, 2008)

We just moved to a new home (24 years old) just in the outskirts of town... 

The house is on a well and has terrible sulfur... The previous owners had culligan install a chlorination system as such

Well water comes in, bleach is injected via powered pump (pump has a rotary adjustment 0 - 10)... After the injection site is a tee fitting that goes to a wellmate-w9 pressure tank and out the other side goes into the bottom of a 120 gallon wellmate mixing tank... Off the top of the mixing tank it is piped into a culligan cullar carbon filter

Now, the previous owners seemingly had their bleach mix WAAAY watered down and as a result the entire system is pretty sulfury... I had culligan in to check everything out (previous owners had schd maintenance done Aug 11, 2010) and the guy told me basically the mix was way off and that the cullar carbon was probably soured from too much sulfury water getting to it...

That said he set the cullar to regen everynight and took the bleach feeder from the bleach mixing tank into a bottle of straight clorox... He told me it's better to feed pure clorox into the system and just dial down the injection pump as needed (he showed me where to take water samples) and just monitor the levels every 2-3 days until the water leaving the mixing tank is .5 to 1 parts bleach, which would be safe to consume should we need to bypass the cullar if it indeed is soured and needs to be repacked with carbon ($450)

Now, on top of all that, as he was working he also said the WM-9 pressure tank was had a hole in the bladder and wasnt holding pressure (you could hear the tank gluggling) and recommended I replace it ($750)... He said if I do it myself to get a tank that has a chemical resistant bladder so it would hold up better...

So I called a buddy who can get me this type of stuff wholesale and he said that rather than buy a special tank that I should pipe the pressure tank AFTER the mixing tank so that the water hitting the bladder wouldnt have so much bleach in it...

I'm wary of changing the piping setup and suggested maybe inverting the tee such that the bleach is injected AFTER the pressure tank

I did some research and see many examples where they say the injection site should come before the pressure tank

Can anyone offer up any advice as to what difference the placement makes or if moving the injection site after the tank will do any harm? It seems to me that either would be plenty safe and OK for the system

Thanks for the help and my apologies for the long winded dissertation


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## Akpsdvan (Mar 25, 2010)

How old is the pressure tank that has to be replaced? If the house is 24 and the pressure tank is half of that , that is about right, 12 years for a pressure tank is not bad, some go longer some shorter.

Normally there is the injection point before the pressure tank and that pump is tied to the pressure switch.. and the pressure tank and another tank are used as retention tanks, or time for the chlorine and water to get to know each other, about 20 minutes often is the right time frame.
Size of tanks for the 20 minutes would vary depending on the flow rate.. if the water is moving at 7gpm then 20 times 7 would be 140 gallons of water or a tank that can hold say 150 gallons.
Then there is the carbon tank after this so that the chlorine can be removed along with any thing else that the chlorine has killed or made while it was with the water.

Depending on what is in the water besides the smell, there might be other ways of removing the smell besides chlorine.


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## scrupul0us (Apr 12, 2008)

The pressure tank was installed in 2004 so it went a good 6.5 years (of course the warranty is 5 years on the tank)

Far as I know, we have methane (little bubbles) and sulfur.

They had tried to sell the previous owners an aeration system to get rid of the methane bubbles but cost vs benefit apparently wasnt worth it to them. The only real issue is that the methane tends to build up in the Cullar and as a result doesnt backwash/regen properly in one pass

I have no issue replacing the pressure tank I was just looking for some words of wisdom on its placement in the system

Thank you for your response =)


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## Akpsdvan (Mar 25, 2010)

Sounds like the time for the backwashing needs to be added to, if two cycles back to back are really needed then really a single cycle but longer would be better. If the system that is in right now can not have time added to each part of the cleaning cycle then maybe a control valve that can have time added.
Culligan of late has some different controls for their valves and maybe yours can have the programing changed so that one cycle per night or every other night would be better.


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## scrupul0us (Apr 12, 2008)

Bit of an update here...

Got a new pressure tank installed... buddy works for a plumbers supply and got me the same exact tank for 43% less than Culligan , had a nice quick connect on it too

The system has balanced out quite a bit... I've weened the chem feeder down from 10 to 6.5 shooting pure Clorox which gives me about 2-3 ppm after the 120 gal storage tank... the final level seems to sway a little and when I had the feeder down as low as 5 I actually wasnt injecting enough...

The initial shock of pure clorox REALLY helped the culligan filter tremendously but theres still a slight smell

My same buddy says he can get the replacement material for inside the culligan filter (albeit not culligan brand) for cheaper, about 25% what culligan wants... I'm a little weary of this one though... I looked over the manual and see quite a few o-rings, a filter basket, etc that he CANNOT get but presumes SHOULD be replaced... I'm assuming culligan would replace all of that when they recharge the tank

Has anyone ever tried to recharge/fill their Culligar Cullar with fresh carbon themselves? Am i right in being cautious on this one? Should I just bite the bullet and drop the $450 to have them do it (and be on bypass for a WEEK)


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## Akpsdvan (Mar 25, 2010)

Photo of the Culligan system in Question?
If it is their valve then yes it will be a challenge in that you have to get their parts or find some one that has some that are cheaper.. 
It could be that they used a fleck valve but put culligan on the front.. have seen that before and parts are easy to come up with.

I have a customer of two that have a Culligan carbon unit and have replaced their carbon with the carbon that I use and things have worked out with no problems.

There are different types of carbon, acid wash ,, non acid wash along with bituminous coal... coconut shell and then there is centaur carbon... not all carbon is the same.


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## scrupul0us (Apr 12, 2008)

I have a 'culligan cullar gold series'

the manual says 'from 2001 on'

ive attached a few images


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## Andy CWS (Apr 27, 2007)

Personally, would avoid injectiong the chlorine concentrate INTO the pressure tank. The strong oxident will cause the rubber bladder to deteriorate.

Ideally, a 20-minute contact time should be sufficient. Actually though, it is relative to the concentration of the chemical and water being treated. In other words, 20 minutes won't nearly be enough if you are injecting 0.5ppm chlorine into water suffering 40ppm sulfur. Likewise, 5.0ppm chlorine treating 0.5ppm sulfur would be over kill. So the 20-minute rule is nice but not always available and other factors must be considered.

I would have around 1ppp chlorine after the retention tank if possible.

It is a hit-n-miss proposition. That is why a test-port after the retention tank (before the carbon filter) is so important. Sulfur is very 
mercurial and can vary according to season, weather, water usage and other ambient aspects. By monitoring the free chlorine, you can adjust to feed as not to over-burden the carbon filter and relief your house of the unwanted odors.

Also, does the retention tank have a drain at the bottom?

Andy Christensen


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## Akpsdvan (Mar 25, 2010)

The well mate pressure tank can have the bladder replaced, it is the type of tank that has a changeable bladder.
Years ago the company I worked for had one like that, took about 20 minutes of break down and replace and putting it back together and the cost was about 100.0 and that was a tank 3x the size and in mid 90's.
The Culligan looks to be 1.0 cubic foot of carbon and that most likely is undersized, or the need of a flow control so that there is contact time between the water with the chlorine and the carbon for removal.
One rule of thumb is 20 minute contact time for the chlorine, so if that is 120 gallon tank that would be no more than 6gpm to the house and just on the edge for the carbon if all that it was taking out was chlorine, but twice as fast if there is iron and h2s....
One thing that might get tried is finding a different flow control for the Culligan.. or increasing the backwash rate from 3gpm to 4gpm... 4gpm might be enough to get more water through the media on the back wash with out pushing out the carbon in the backwash.

It is so nice to see a VW bug sent to do the work of a 15 passenger van....


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## scrupul0us (Apr 12, 2008)

My system goes, 

well -> chlorine injection -> tee to pressure tank -> test port -> 120 gallon mixing tank -> test port -> culligan filter -> test port -> house

I'm wary of moving the injection site past the pressure tank (flip the tee) only because I'm not sure if that voids any warranty culligan may have on the piping, albeit, it makes more sense to move it... maybe that's their 'schtick' so you are replacing the tank every 'x' years after the tank warranty expires due to chem deterioration

I'm still a tad new to this so I'm learning the ropes... I found that while I know a level of '5' on the chem feeder gives me a .5 - 1ppm after the 120 gal mixing tank, the water in the house is once again very sulfury where as running it higher (6-8) which obviously gives a higher ppm after mixing also seems to shock the culligan filter and make the water MUCH more pleasant in the house

At the end of the day, I REALLY need to replace the filtration medium in the culligan so the water isnt being soured by the soured medium after which I can dial back the chlorine in the system... what im trying to determine is if its worth trying to replace myself or if its just one of those inherent 'cost of doing business' items i just need to do...

supposedly culligan says the medium should be good for 8 years on a monitored and maintained system (the previous owners stopped monitoring the chlorine levels which soured the medium)... 

worse come to worse we just wait until our old house sells and then just invest the 450$ for a recharge... sighs


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## scrupul0us (Apr 12, 2008)

also yes, our 120 gallon mixing tank has a drain at the bottom


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## Unclebob9 (Jul 18, 2011)

*chlorine injection retention tank*



scrupul0us said:


> My system goes,
> 
> well -> chlorine injection -> tee to pressure tank -> test port -> 120 gallon mixing tank -> test port -> culligan filter -> test port -> house
> 
> ...



I know this is an old thread, but some may find this information helpful:
I have been battling this for awhile. I have had bad luck with bladder tanks, galvanized tanks seem to last much longer. I got sucked into buying some rapid retention tanks and Termonox filters. 
Budget water's 5 year warranty is a joke, one of my fleck control heads failed after 3 months and I rushed it back to them ($30 postage) and they have had it over a month now and told me If I was in rush to buy another from them as a spare for $400+. I found one on EBAY for $239 and have installed it and Budget still has not returned mine.
Anyway, the best way to deal with Iron and manganese is with a LARGE retention tank. The 20 minute suggested retention time may be alright for iron, but it is not enough for Manganese. 
Chlorine is a great oxidizer but also corrodes metal. With steel pressure tanks, I recommend placing the pressure tanks after the retention tanks, mainly for this reason. I am in the process of moving some tanks around which will give me a 50 minute retention time before the pressure tanks. I think after this is completed, I will no longer need the $3000 budget water tanks or the $1200 rapid retention tanks, but I will leave them in line for now and test in between to see IF they are still doing any good. 
I stumbles across some 2150 gallon ocean buoys ($400 each, never in the water) I am using for this project. I will use one as a pressure tank and another as the retention tank. I tested them to 150psi, so they are solid. My well pump is a Goulds rated at 33 gpm but pumps 40 at lower pressures.
Another advantage I can see by putting the retention tank first is that it will capture all the iron, manganese and sand, so I will only need to flush 1 tank bi-monthly.


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