If you are on a well in Harnett County, or anywhere in the rural counties around the Triangle, there is a good chance you have met at least one of these: orange staining that will not come out of the laundry, or a rotten-egg smell that hits hardest in the hot water.
They are two different problems. They also arrive together often enough that treating one without the other usually leaves you disappointed.
The orange staining is iron
Iron sits dissolved in groundwater, invisible, until it meets air. Then it oxidises, comes out of solution, and lands on whatever is nearby. That is why you do not see it in the glass, but you do see it on the sink, the tub, the toilet tank and the whites in the wash.
It is an aesthetic contaminant rather than a regulated health one. That distinction matters when someone tries to sell you on fear, and it matters not at all when you are looking at a ruined shirt.
The rotten-egg smell is hydrogen sulfide
Hydrogen sulfide gas is produced by bacteria living in low-oxygen groundwater. It is extremely common in North Carolina wells. It is not usually a health hazard at the levels found in residential wells, but it is genuinely unpleasant, it can corrode plumbing over time, and it will not clear up on its own.
If the smell is worse from the hot tap than the cold, that is worth mentioning when we test. It changes what we look at.
The iron number decides the system
This is the part most companies skip, and it is the only part that determines what you should buy.
Both of our well systems are dual tank. The difference between them is not tank count, it is how much iron your water is carrying.
Below 6 ppm of iron, air injection handles it. The Iron Breaker AIO pulls in a pocket of air and uses it to oxidise the iron, sulfur and manganese so the media bed can trap them and flush them out on backwash. One tank does that, a second tank softens, and there are no chemicals to refill.
Above 6 ppm, air injection cannot keep up. The Peroxide Injection system is also a dual-tank well system, with peroxide doing the oxidising in place of air. It is the stronger oxidiser, for the heavier iron loads.
That is the whole decision, and it comes off a number on your test.
What usually comes with them
Iron and sulfur rarely travel alone out here.
- Sediment. Sand and grit are abrasive and shorten the life of the pump, the pressure tank and every piece of treatment media downstream. On a well this is close to a default rather than an upgrade.
- Hardness. Unlike metro municipal supply, well water in this direction can be severe. We have tested wells in Harnett County and the surrounding areas at 25 grains per gallon and higher.
- Low pH. Acidic water is common in North Carolina groundwater. If yours is below about 6.5, that usually gets corrected ahead of everything else, because acidic water is hard on plumbing and on treatment equipment alike.
Why we will not quote you over the phone
Two homes twenty miles apart out here can need completely different systems. Without an iron number, a pH reading and a hardness figure, any quote is a guess dressed up as a price.
The test is free, it takes about fifteen minutes at your kitchen sink, and you get the numbers whether or not you buy anything. If your water turns out to be fine, we will tell you that and leave.
