Sulfur odor, black residue in toilets.

[BringingChaos]

Hello, and thanks for reading.
I'm here to try and get some help for mom with the situation at her house.

About a month ago we began to start smelling sulfur when running the hot water. I did some searching on the web and thought it to be due to a corroded sacrificial anode in the hot water heater due to us not noticing the odor coming from cold water.

Lately we have noticed the smell coming from the cold water faintly as well and the toilets have been getting dirty quite fast. Opening the toilet tank we saw that it was covered in a black residue/mold.

Assuming now the problem was not the hot water heater and was coming from the well I've done more searching. I've read pouring bleach into the wells pump and letting it sit 8 - 24 hours then flushing all water lines in and out of the house will solve this problem.

Before we go about doing any of this I would appreciate your professional opinions on whether or not this will solve the problem, or more details on how long to let the bleach set and then flush. A lot of the information I found was a bit vague and inconsistent with one another.

Thanks so much for your time.

 

[speedbump]

If the smell is bacterial, chlorinating the well properly might end the odor. If it's sulphur, the chlorination will only be a temporary fix.

The info you found was vague, but so was your explanation of the well, the well pump etc. You can not pour bleach into the pump, you must get it into the well. This is only possible with a shallow well system and a submersible system. If you have a deep well system, it can't be done. That is without removing everything in the well first.

 

[BringingChaos]

Thanks for the reply speedbump. I dont know anything about this stuff or what kind of information I should be giving. I know that there is a pipe in the yard that goes to the well or whatever, and the pump is in the basement.

I think the smell may be bacterial because of the black mold or whatever it is building in the toilet tanks. The smell is like rotten eggs. I read on the net though that that smell is usually sulfur.

What sort of info could I provide you to determine which sort of well system my mom has here?

I'm really dumb when it comes to this kind of stuff. If it was a computer I could take care of it. Maybe I should put some extra RAM in the well?

 

[hopes2]

Google-- hydrogen sulfide and wells.

 

[speedbump]

Is the smell the same in the hot and the cold?

Does the pipe in the yard have a cap of some sort on it? Can you approximate the diameter of that pipe?

The pump; does it have two pipes leaving it towards the well or just one. If just one, what is it's diameter?

 

[BringingChaos]

Thanks speedbump,

The smell in the hot water is FAR more intense than the cold water, but the smell coming from both is the same.

The pipe in the yard has a cap and what looks like a drain on it. It is approx 4" in diameter.

The pump has only one pipe heading towards the well, it is 1 1/4" diameter.

 

[speedbump]

It sounds like you have a Pitless adaptor with a shallow well jet pump.
I think you have sulphur in your water if you smell it in the cold. If it's stronger in the hot water, you may have to remove the sacrificial rod from the water heater totally or replace it with a different kind. Or you can set the temperature up to 140° and kill the bacteria that is living in the tank.