A Peaceful Weekend

Well, we think we finally have all our issues with the well behind us. The day after we learned we needed a new furnace, the Health Department called and said that they found bacteria in the water sample they took from our house. He assured Eric that this bacteria wasn't harmful, but needed to be taken care of before the Health Department could pass the inspection of our house. He told us to have our well chlorinated, and then he would retest the water.

The next day, some wonderful guys from Seese Well Drilling (seriously, they have been nothing short of wonderful through this whole thing....the guys from Canfield Heating and Plumbing too....) came out and pulled up our well pump from 100 feet down, cleaned it, and filled the well with chlorine. We couldn't use the water for 8 hours, then we had to run the hose for 2 hours to get all the chlorine out. The water from the faucets was nasty for the next two days...fun. The Health Department came out and tested, and called us back after two days with the wonderful news that it still tested positive for bacteria. Starting to get frustrated, I started asking him questions which he didn't know the answers to, only fueling my fire. He wasn't the most "customer service" oriented individual I ever met (who is these days?...that could be a whole other blog....I have run into many in the past month). As I was giving our realtor an update (I thought that should be the other way around...again, a whole other blog..) I told her my frustration with him, and she immediately went to his defense - "you have to understand that he is the only one in the whole county who takes water samples". Sounds tough. I'm sorry he is so "overwhelmed" with his job, but that doesn't mean he can't answer my questions, or direct me to someone who can. And that only fueled our fire towards our realtor.

Anyway, he suggested re-chlorination, and then another test. The well guys came out again, and this time shed some new light on the situation. He informed me that if this test came back positive, we should have them take the sample to another lab and have it tested. He said that 9 times out of 10 when the sample comes back bad twice - it's because the State has done it. We went through the whole chlorination process again, and waited for our test results. Can you guess? Positive.

The Health Department suggested two options: re-chlorinate, or have the well guys do the test and send it to a different lab. At this point, we were frustrated and confused. If one lab says there is bacteria, and another one doesn't, who is right? How would I feel if I were the buyer? What results would I trust? And why is the Health Department telling us to have a different test - do they think something is wrong with theirs? Hmmm...

Eric talked to the well guys, and it was decided that they would come out and take a sample and send it to another lab. They said if this one came back bad, they could take a sample directly from the well, to determine if that was bad, or it was bad somewhere in the house. Well, our realtor wasn't too happy with that - "why don't they just do that all at once and save us some time?". It was coming down to the wire, so getting this done quickly was important. But, this isn't her money we are talking about. The results take less than 24 hours, so we told her that we were going with the recommendations of the well guys, since they knew more about this. Anyway, the next day the sample came back - negative.

Now, the question we ask is, was our water fine to begin with? Did we need to spend the money to have it chlorinated twice? No one will ever know. Apparently, the Health Department uses a test that turns the water yellow if there is bacteria in it. Some water will turn yellow even if there is no bacteria in it. You would think if that State knows this (why would they tell us to get it tested somewhere else if they didn't?), they would change their test, or at least let the homeowner know that after the first postive test, they may want to spend the $15 to get it tested somewhere else, before spending $150 to have the well chlorinated. That's the lovely government at work.

They came out and took another sample this morning, so we should have that back tomorrow. We were going to close on this house tomorrow, but now it has been pushed back to next week. So, we are going camping with our Jackson friends this weekend. This has been planned for months now, but we were thinking that we wouldn't be able to go because of the closing. But now, we are outta here!!

Hopefully we won't have to deal with any house issues over the weekend. We have been looking forward to this trip, and are very excited that it worked out for us to go.

Yes Susan, this is the curse of the Jorgensen False Positive....