Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink!

I have a headache.  I need to take a headache tablet, but I can't.  The problem is, though I have a well full of water, running water in my house, two baths full of water, until I get to the store to buy bottled water, I can't fill a glass and take my tablets.

Why is this I hear you ask?  To cut a long story short our buyers have now had 2 water sampling tests done and there are apparently bacteria present.  Now I say apparently, not because I think their tests are wrong, but that it is extremely easy for the sample to be contaminated at the time of it being taken by the person taking it, in this case their realtor.  Now we are not unfamiliar with this.  When we were buying this house last year we had a water sample test done and it came back with a result of coliforms (bacteria) present at a rate of 4 mpn/100mL (don't ask me what it means but it was fairly low and we were told at the time that it could be a sampling protocol or a lab problem.  We retested and the results came back even lower, 1 mpn/100mL.  At the time we weren't overly worried, our mortgage wasn't in question (any  coliform result can mean that mortgage will not be granted) so we decided to go ahead with the purchase and just keep an eye on things.

We then retested the water again in April in advance of our putting it on the market, thinking that if there was going to be any problems then we would rectify it before putting it on the market.  The results?  Absolutely clear, coliforms, absent.  No worries we think.  Everything's fine we think.  Never, ever be relaxed about anything is my new motto.

The frustrating thing is that the water tests they requested and carried out don't actually tell you how low or high the coliform count is.  The results just say 'present'.  I mean what help is this?  Is this a similar problem to last year or a really major problem?  There is quite clearly nothing drastically wrong with our water.  We've been drinking it now for over a year and can honestly say we have not been ill, and believe me if there were massive coliforms present in the water, we would be ill.

So, no it's 'shock' the well time, which means that it has to be heavily chlorinated, left to 'stew' for 12-12 hours before we start the long process of syphoning off the chlorinated water and letting the well refill again and eventually, hopefully, flushing all the chlorine out.  How long does this take?  We are having the water guy back out on Tuesday to test whether the chlorine is out of the system and take a new water sample to be sent off for testing. 

From what I can gather until the water is out of the system we can't use it, at all, not a tap, not a toilet flush, no laundry, nothing.  I mean it could upset the good bacteria in the septic tank, couldn't it?

Now that would be the biggest irony after all this wouldn't it?  We flush the well but the bacteria are still there but in the process we accidentally syphon it off in to the septic tank and it kills all the bacteria which are needed there!