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gestetner_gw

Egg Smell From New Carbon Tank System?!?!?!

gestetner
11 years ago

I just had a whole house carbon tank system installed last night. 4 cu.ft of GAC in a tank with a Fleck 7000XTR valve (all new equipment). I am on muni water in Orange County, CA. I've NEVER had any odor issues with my water before (other than the typical chlorine smell of muni water).

The carbon tank was backwashed twice and then placed into service. The water in the house now has a really strong sulphur/rotten egg smell. The chlorine smell is gone but the sulphur/egg smell is nasty.

I didn't smell it as much on the hot line. It's really strong on the cold line. I tested it at multiple taps. I ran the water for a really long time to flush the lines. It didn't go away over night. I grabbed a few cups of water from a bib prior to the tank system and there was no such odor coming from the muni supply.

Today, I bypassed the carbon tank. I ran the cold lines to flush them. The sulphur/egg smell went away and the cold water now smells like chlorine again.

The installer says that he's never heard of a carbon system causing odor and he says it cannot be the cause. Based on the fact that I've never had this odor before, it appeared immediately after placing the carbon tank online, and it disappeared when I bypassed the carbon tank, it looks to me that the carbon tank is involved somehow.

The only other change was that I did my annual hot water heater draining yesterday (gas water heater). But as noted above, I'm getting the strongest smells on the cold water lines (including dedicated/non mixer cold lines).

I tried to do some research and only found articles about getting rid of such smells in the water supply, like hydrogen sulfide in well water. I found nothing about my situation.

[I posted last week about a getting a new softener system. However, I haven't had a new softener installed yet so there is no new softening system affecting this issue.]

Does anybody have an idea about what's going on here?

Thanks.