Smelly Well Water

If it smells like rotten eggs then you have sulfur in the well. You can add filters to help it. If it smells like sewage/septic then you may have a contaminated well. We had to have a well redrilled when I lived in PA (it dried up) and after we went deeper it starter to have that sulfur smell. We put filters in and when it is used you don't notice it. But when the house was empty it smelled awful.
Unfortunately, there is nothing other than different types of filters to get rid of the sulfur. My MIL's house (in PA) has always had it.

I know you are saying you are getting it tested, but the sooner, the better. You can get your well tested for as cheap as $38. I guess you are not telling us enough either. What does the smell smell like. Is it Sulfa or is it high Iron or is it sewage. Does it also taste bad? I know of a family whose water went to smelling bad one fall and they said it was more like amonia. Come to find out they had a snake den that had made home near the well. It made the water soooo bad, they had to redig a new one on the other side of the property and start over. They also spent thousands to get rid of the den. They had to as I guess the pollution that the snakes put off could have killed them... Not thinking it is that with you, but could you tell us more and call the company to test it ASAP. Also go to bottled water for cooking and drinking until you have the answer. I sure hope it is not a rotton egg smell, that usually means you are having issues with your septic too... Good luck and let us know. Sounds like the Pink Truck may need to visit soon.

We have well water and notice that the water (or the wash--usually the wash) *smells* based on certain times of the year and/or due to rain/how much rain we've had (due to the fact that the earth strata gets changed/sifted through by the rain water).

Other than leaving the washing machine open so that smells don't stay inside when it's empty, we don't do much. There's not much that can be done when it's the environment doing the changing (we notice the same thing with soap, how sometimes the dishsoap will leave lots and lots of soap bubbles in the sink and other times, you can barely tell that any soap has been put into the water).

The only thing we did four years ago was we put in a reverse osmosis system on our drinking water faucet, mostly because we live in an area where there is still some farming and didn't want any pesticide residue getting into our drinking/cooking water. Also our nitrites are a little higher than we'd like, so ee put in the R/O system. Wonderful drinking water and clear ice cubes--can't be beat!

We also have a filtration system for the water coming into the house before it goes into our tank. Where we live it's quite sandy, and that helps capture some of the grit.

What kind of smell? Nasty, sewage-y or rotten eggs? I didn't have an odor, but I was getting brownish-rusty colored water for a while. Turned out it was some kind of bacteria. My well company bleached the lines, as you mentioned above, and then we couldn't use the water for quite a few hours - maybe up to 12 hours or more. I recall going out for a long shopping expedition that day. I think they used a pretty good amount of bleach. It took care of the problem and the water tested fine after that. I still don't drink it, though. I keep thinking about maybe purchasing a reverse-osmosis system.

Get the water tested and, if the problem is serious, bring in a professional well company.

p.s. Don't forget after bleaching the lines to put something like Rid-X down your toilet if you have a cesspool. The bleach kills off all the good bacteria down there and could cause big problems.