Well Water Problems
Arsenic in Well Water: Testing and Removal Options
Arsenic is odorless, colorless, and tasteless, so a certified lab test is the only way to find it. The EPA's Maximum Contaminant Level for public wate…
Rusty, smelly, cloudy or metallic well water — what the color, smell and taste really mean, and which treatment fixes each one.
Arsenic is odorless, colorless, and tasteless, so a certified lab test is the only way to find it. The EPA's Maximum Contaminant Level for public wate…
Black specks are usually manganese — the EPA sets its aesthetic limit at just 0.05 mg/L, twenty times stricter than iron, because it stains black at t…
A chlorine or pool smell means free chlorine you can taste, typically well under the EPA's 4 mg/L maximum residual disinfectant level. Most people not…
Milky-white cloudiness almost always means tiny air bubbles, and the test is watching a glass clear from the bottom up within 1–2 minutes as bubbles r…
Hard water, which contains high levels of calcium and magnesium, leaves mineral buildup on skin and hair. This can worsen dryness, dullness, and irrit…
Hard water is dissolved calcium and magnesium, measured in grains per gallon (gpg). Water crosses into "hard" at 7 gpg (about 120 mg/L) and "very hard…
Iron staining starts around 0.3 mg/L (the EPA aesthetic threshold) and gets ugly past 1 mg/L. Below about 1–3 mg/L of dissolved iron, a good water sof…
You can measure hardness, pH, chlorine, iron and rough TDS at home with test strips and a $15 pocket meter in about ten minutes. But bacteria, nitrate…
Lead almost never arrives from the source — it dissolves out of your own service line, pre-1986 solder and brass fixtures, so no glass test, TDS meter…
Manganese stains hard at the EPA aesthetic limit of 0.05 mg/L and has a separate lifetime health advisory of 0.3 mg/L. Below roughly 0.5 mg/L a water …
A metallic taste means dissolved metal, and there are four usual suspects: iron (tastes noticeable above the 0.3 mg/L aesthetic limit), copper leachin…
Nitrate is odorless and invisible, and the only way to find it is a water test. The EPA's Maximum Contaminant Level for nitrate in drinking water is 1…
Orange well water is almost always iron — the EPA flags staining above 0.3 mg/L — usually with a supporting cast. A shade drifting toward brown hints …
Rust color is oxidized (ferric) iron — the visible, particle form. Where it comes from decides the fix: a corroding steel or galvanized pipe (often ju…
A salty taste almost always points to chloride climbing past 250 mg/L (the EPA aesthetic limit) or sodium creeping over roughly 200 mg/L. A softener w…
That odor is hydrogen sulfide gas (H₂S) dissolving into your water. A human nose picks it up at roughly 0.5 parts per million (ppm) and finds it hard …
Pale-yellow well water is usually either tannins (dissolved organic matter from decaying leaves and peat, harmless but stubborn) or low-level iron/man…