Where does your water actually come from?

Hard water is a nuisance rather than a health hazard. It wrecks water heaters, spots glassware and dries out skin, and the EPA groups hardness, deposits and scale with the aesthetic and technical effects covered by its secondary standards.

The utilities serving Palm Beach County treat water to meet federal drinking water standards and publish their results every year in a Consumer Confidence Report. Taste and what the water does to your plumbing are separate questions, and those are the problems we solve.

Enter your ZIP in the lookup on this page, then check the provider named on your water bill, since ZIP boundaries and utility service areas differ. On a private well, the water is the owner's responsibility, with no utility treating or testing it first.

Chloramine forms when ammonia is added to chlorine. Most utilities in this county use it because it keeps disinfecting for longer as water travels through the pipes to your house. It is safe at regulated levels, and removing it for taste takes a proper carbon bed with enough contact time.

Two different jobs. Softening uses ion exchange to remove calcium and magnesium, which is what causes scale. Filtering uses carbon to reduce chlorine, chloramine and the compounds behind bad taste and smell. Our whole-home systems do both, in one tank.

Dissolved solids, nitrates, arsenic and similar pass through carbon and softening resin. Reverse osmosis at the kitchen sink is what handles them, which is why our package pairs a whole-home softener with RO, from $2,850 installed with a lifetime warranty.

What actually reaches your kitchen tap: hardness, chlorine or chloramine, iron and whatever else is there, in about 15 minutes. You see the result yourself, and you get an exact price before you decide.