We have been renovating a house for the past few months, and are going to be moving in soon. We had the water tested, and the well needs to be shocked. Not a big deal; had to do that with other houses in the past.
But since this house is undergoing renovation, not all of the faucets are installed/working. Some of the lines are just capped at the moment. Is it useless to shock the well before all of the fixtures can be opened? I’d like to shock the well now and flush the fixtures that are hooked up, so that we can move in. But will there be a reservoir of contaminated water in the capped-off lines that will just re-contaminate the rest of the water in the house lines? Should I re-shock the well once the other fixtures have been connected?
Dead end pipes do make the most thorough chlorination impossible. It does not mean a less thorough job won’t be successful. Chlorine does do a pretty good job of distributing itself through water, so even pipes you can’t run water through may well end up chlorinated.
I chlorinate wells and homes regularly. It is now my standard procedure to skip washing washing lines, so those end up being dead ends. To many issues have arose from running washers or disconnecting the hoses to run those lines, so I gave up. Not intentionally chlorinating those lines has not proven to be an issue.
If you are going to be installing an easy method to introduce chlorine after the well, like a cartridge housing, I’d chlorinate the well and the pipes you can do now, now. Then after the other faucets are installed just chlorinate the house without the well to hit those other lines. It’s much simpler to bleach the houses lines than the entire well again.
Boy, you mention a cartridge. What is that and where is it installed?
All I ever see about chlorination are multi-thousand dollar systems.
A cartridge filter housing. They are a very common piece of treatment equipment on well systems. They use disposable cartridge filters. They are typically installed to remove sediment.
If a house happens to have one, it is very easy to take it apart and fill it 2ith chlorine for the purposes of chlorinating later treatment equipment or the lines in the house.