well water corrosion

[Sarah]

The men just left. Replaced the brass pitless and pitless adapters in the three wells. First sign of trouble was a nice 'spring' outside the casing. What a mess!

That one was corroded away! The other too were also in poor shape, but one gave us a manufacturing date, 1992. This is the first I ever heard of brass becoming corroded from well water. And now I am concerned with all the brass and copper pipe in the structures.

What in well water could corrode brass?

Sarah

[WRTN]

You should check your well water for acidity level. If the water contains a high acid level it will cause corrosion with any metal it comes in contact with. If the water acidity is the cause, use pvc in place of brass or copper where ever possible. You can treat the water for an acceptable ph going into the house but the water in the well is still an issue.

http://www.aquascience.net/FleckPentair-pH-neutralizers_c_21-1-0.html

Hydrogen sulfide can cause corrosion issues along with the rotten egg smell. Is you well water exhibiting a smell like this?

Another cause although very unlikely is a defective or poor ground in the system. This can cause huge corrosion problems in boats that are hooked up to shore power or generator power. A similar situation could happen if a defective ground were to allow or cause voltage leakage into the surround ground around the well. A good solid ground rod driven at least 4 to 6 feet into the ground and preferably the full 8 feet with a good grounds strap secured to it should address this.

[tufhelp]

Any chance the corrosion is from a dissimilar metals situation between the brass fitting and perhaps galvanized pipe going down into the well?

[Drawbar]

Dumb question...are you sure its brass? With todays metal what looks like brass or copper may be a hybrid. 1992 is not very long.

Its interesting to note that the foot valve on my grandmothers well went to heck last winter. When we pulled the well, the pipes going down to the foot valve were copper pipes and bolted together with flanges. No soldered joints here. Now that is VERY old copper piping there. We figure 1930's sometime. ???

I would suspect you have something grounded to your water system somewhere. We have this problem on boats a lot. Last winter we built a boat and within months it had corroded two keel cooler water lines...made out of stainless steel. This was the boat so no short cuts were taken. (15 million)

http://www.lymanmorse.com/images/electra/running_2.jpg

[Sarah]

WRTN: *You nailed it. *Acid water. *Basic soil. *Verified by litmus paper. I had never noticed, as the RO system neutralizes the pH.

Tufhelp: To the best of my knowledge, no dissimilar metal issues. *In fact they are using that to counter, see below.

Drawbar: Definitely brass. No installed 'zincs' on that boat? * Even a lubber like me knows about sacrificial, screw on, zinc blisters. Anodes I think they are called. *

Well, we have a temporary solution and a permanent solution in the works. *The pitless was replaced with an exact duplicate, grounded to a copper rod, via stainless plated aluminum wire. *The rod is intended to be sacrificial. *The final solution is to take the brass pitless, and black chrome plate it. *Three times. *I do not know how knowledgeable you are about plating, and I am not, but am told that first they copper, then nickel, then black chrome. *Repeat three times. *This combination, per Caswell (the plating company), creates electric field protection vs corrosion of this type.

Sarah