bc.gold 3,403 #1 Posted August 30, 2021 (edited) I may have discovered an easy test to check well water for bacteria. Water in the coffee carafe is from a well, with a small addition sodium hydroxide the calcium precipitates out but after an hour or so small bubble appear and some of the calcium hitch hikes a ride to the top of the water. A bit of research tells me that bacteria reacts with calcium. After shocking the sample with chlorine the bubbles are no longer being generated and the clumps of calcium have broken up into much finer particles. So far we have used this test on three water wells, the community well had the most calcium precipitate with out the bubbles being present. Gregg's well had more calcium precipitate than the water from our well, both samples made bubbles. We did the community well test last night, as I mentioned no bubbles were present, what I then did was inoculate the water from the community well with half an ounce of water from Gregg's well and within the hour enough bacteria had grown to react with the community well sample. I did not shock the community sample after inoculating, we want to see how far advanced the bubbles progress over night. Edited August 31, 2021 by bc.gold 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Handy Don 12,163 #2 Posted August 31, 2021 Makes me glad I'm connected to our village water supply! Plus the water dept. asked for volunteers some years back to give samples for their full semi-annual testing assay--we've been getting personal testing twice a year ever since. 1 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites