Water Softeners and Air Filtration Systems - Smell from one faucet

I have just one faucet which has a musty smell from the cold water side. I’m on a well with a calcite ph buffer/filter and water softener. My well water is hard with low ph and a ton of iron. After the filters my water is clean, soft, and well balanced. I would like to shock my entire system starting at the well tank. I was going to use sodium dichloride (chlorine) which I have on hand already from my hot tub. I know that any chlorine is bad for the water softener, so I was going to bypass it.

I would like to know if there is a way to sanitize the water softener without damaging it? Also, should I bypass the calcite filter or run the chlorine through it?
Thanks

Can you give us more details on your 'ton' of iron, 'low pH' and hard water count? Do you have copper piping?

Normally, low pH means low hardness but has no relationship to the amount of iron. It can determine how iron is treated though. If you pH is below 4.5 then you may have some mineral acids as opposed to high levels of carbonic acid caused by carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Have you checked for iron bacteria? Look in the WC tank and see if the sides or covered in a gooey red film.

I don't think that bleach in the neutralizing tank will cause any harm to the equipment or media. Is it a backwashing type or an upflow type? Don’t put full strength bleach through the softener, though. By-pass it when chlorinating the well.

If you wish to sanitize the softener, put a cup of bleach in the brine tank and put it through a couple of regenerations. The backwashing stage will wash out excessive bleach so that the contact time will not cause great damage to the resins. This should not be done often.

Andy Christensen, CWS-II

I run into this one alot. Smell from one faucet. No where else, right? Just a guess, but is this the faucet you brush your teeth at? If the smell is only at one faucet, many times the odor is coming from built up gunk (spit out tooth paste) in the drain pipe and trap. Try pouring a little bleach, @ 1/4 cup, down the drain and let it sit for 5 minutes and rinse it down. See if that clears it out for a while.

Thank you for the replies. I actually noticed that the water did not smell with the drain closed and realized that it was air being pushed out of the drain when the water fas first turned on in the morning. I poured some enzyme pipe cleaner down the drain (I have private septic) and the problem went away. So, Cleanwaterman hit the nail right on the head.