Oh Black Water

It's been eye opening to have purchased an older home that needed some work.  We have uncovered termites and mold and lots and lots of pink/peach paint.  One of the hardest adjustments, especially for Dave, has been well water.  I grew up on well water, but overall our water at my parents' home is/was pretty good.  I remember my dad putting salt in the water softener but otherwise the water was good.  Here, it's been a little different.  We have put salt in our water softener but our water has continued to be disgusting.  We have rust stains everywhere.  I cannot keep the toilets clean no matter what I do.  Our laundry has been ruined with orange rust.  And the bath water for Anderson looks dirty and gross.  A few weeks ago we discovered there was a filter in the water system.  Dave took hours to figure it out and let me tell you, NASTY!!!  We put in a new filter, it helped for two days, and then it was back to gross.  Needless to say, I've been buying gallons and gallons of water for drinking.

As we've started the remodel on our bathroom, I've stated that I will not put in new fixtures until our water problems are solved.  Dave is busy all the time, so I took it upon myself to contact Culligan to hear about our options.  The Culligan Man checked out our equipment, smelled our water, looked at our fixtures, and inspected the back of our toilets (ick).  Then he did a bunch of tests on the water, like hardness level, iron levels, and drinkability.  As it turns out, our water is incredibly hard.  And that's before and after the water softener.  So basically, our water softener is doing absolutely nothing.  The problem we're having with iron is not actually the iron level, it's the bacteria that feeds off iron (ick). 

The recommendations were a new water softener, an iron-specific water softener type thing, and a reverse osmosis system since we drink so much water.  Unfortunately, that totaled up to over $6K, something we don't exactly have sitting around.  We've begun looking around at different companies and options and it looks like we may be able to do it ourselves for much, much cheaper.  Hopefully it is something we can fix and fix quickly.

Any of you out there on well water?  Anyone else have these same problems?  Found any good solutions?