Well water brown ~twice in last 40 days
Alright bear with me. Our house is in a well. Been here 6 years with no water quality issues. We added a charcoal filter on our drinking water spigot on the side of the sink about three years ago but never any indication we actually needed it. Well pump burned up a year and a half ago and had it and the wires and pvc down piping it hangs from all replaced.
Fast forward a year.
April 13th and then today, almost exactly a month later, we had a slug of brownish water with red and black particulates in it come into our downstairs bathtub. Both times it was while we were running baby’s bath water and by the time I could close one side or the other to figure out if it was coming from hot or cold side it was too late. Side note, the flow of water is well—>Outdoor spigot—>downstairs bathroom—>Rest of the house.
The toilet water was also brown for 2 flushes, so felt pretty confident it was coming from the well (cold water, whole house impact).
I ran the outside water spigot through a hose for 15 minutes or so into a small kiddie pool and dumped it every couple minutes without so much as a spec of anything.
Then I hooked up the hose to the bottom drain of the hot water heater and did several minutes of flushing and a few fill and dumps and it kept blowing down black particles and sediment until I had to come inside cus the mosquitoes were so bad.
While I was filling and dumping the water heater I realized that cold water was coming backwards through the three way valve style showers upstairs so it kept pushing cold water through even with the cold water valve to the hot water heater closed.
My question, is my well water randomly brown for short periods of time? If so, why?
OR,
was my hot water heater starting to get too much sediment in it, and the dirty hot water was coming backwards through the three way valves upstairs when I would flush the toilet downstairs and cold water pressure would drop. The showers are directly above the downstairs bathroom, so it seems feasible.
Not sure what to do and since it’s only happened twice in 6 years idk if I will feel confident I fixed a problem for a long time