Dugout water quality??

[ivbinconned]

We use a dugout for our house supply. Drinking and cooking water gets distilled first.

This year our water has turned very septic?? Even though I airate it constantly. I am desperate and about to dump clorine into the pond...have any of you dumped clorine into your dugouts...and what was the effect??

[Pulseman]

Hello IVBEENCONNED,

Must be the year, I have lots of problems with our dugout, too. Just had it cleaned and fill it now. Just dumbing chlorine in will not do anything, just think of the dilution. Best is, mix up two bags of copper sulphat with maybe 1000 gal of water and blow it with your 2" Honda pump on top of the dugout, don't use the water for two weeks. The bluestone will kill the plant and fish life in the water and all will go to the bottom. We clean our dugout every 10 years, I found this to be the minimum, 8 years is better. I use to have a chlorinator injector on my water sytem until I had leaks in my copper pips, guess chlorine and copper don't mix, electrolyses.

[ivbinconned]

Thanks for the reply. Tell me the process of cleaning the dugout. Did you dry it up and use a big backhoe or dragline? Or clean it with water in it? Ours is 26 years old with out a cleaning!

Since I posted that I rebeded our carbon backwash filter and that has made a remarkable difference. Plus I have been airating with a 5 hp compressor!!

[countryguy]

There are other non chemical pour in treatments available.I haven't used any of them so i can't give any first hand knowledge.PONDER is the name of the first one that comes to mind.Check "The Book",I believe this one and a few others are listed in there.