Residential Water Treatment

While most homes get their water supply from the municipal water system, there are still those who get their water from private sources. When you get your water from a private well or some other source that is not for public use, the responsibility of keeping your water healthy and clean for use by your family is usually your own since any state or local standards regulating the municipal water system will not apply to you.

Problems in your water supply are a major issue for homeowners with private wells. While most contaminants are naturally occurring in water and are usually not harmful, there are those that may contain toxic compounds harmful for drinking and overall human use. To protect your family from these harmful contaminants, you need a residential water treatment system.

What is a residential water treatment system?

A residential water treatment system is the process of removing or reducing the contaminants found in your water so that it may be safe for use and for drinking by you and your family.

Not all residential water treatment systems are the same. There are those that remove only specific types of contaminants. Others can only solve certain problems, like the “hardness” of water, and not toxicity or chemical quality of the water.

Moreover, residential water treatment systems differ in the manner that they are installed. As to how they are installed, residential water treatment systems are divided into two broad categories – point of entry and point of use devices. The difference between the two is the extent of protection afforded by the device.

Therefore, a point of entry water treatment device treats all the water that is eventually distributed in the home while a point of use treatment system only treats some parts of your water, usually focused on a single faucet.

Buying Residential Water Treatment Equipment

When buying residential water treatment equipment, one of the first things you need to do is to identify the particular water problem you have.

For instance, water coming out of your private well may be hard water – that is, it has high mineral content, particularly magnesium and calcium, which make your water undesirable to use for washing. What’s more, the scale deposit resulting from hard water can also reduce the efficiency of your piping system. In that case, you need residential water treatment equipment that specifically addresses the problem of hard water.

In another example, it could be that your private well may be located near a waste disposal area, such as a septic tank. You worry about contamination; some of the waste water may seep into the well. Your main concern, therefore, is microbiological contamination, which includes bacteria, viruses, fungus, and even parasites. The residential water treatment system that you purchase should be able to address this problem.