Private wells
Well water treatment, read house by house
Waukesha County counts more than 40,000 private wells by its own Environmental Health division’s reckoning, and Delafield is mostly on wells too, as are Richfield and River Hills in the neighboring counties. A private well has no annual report and no utility sampling schedule. The only number that exists is the one somebody measures.
For private wells
The builds a well usually needs
Dual Tank Well Water
Two tanks: an iron-media tank ahead of the softener.
Well water is a different problem from city water. This pairs a softening tank with a separate catalytic iron-media tank ahead of it. Two valves, one per tank.
Best for: homes on a private well with iron or manganese
Details and specs →
Standard Whole-Home Softener + Filtration
Softening resin and activated carbon in one tank. Sized to your water and your household on the quote.
It handles the thing almost every house here has: hardness that scales your pipes, your fixtures and your water heater. Ion-exchange resin under activated coconut-shell carbon, over a gravel underbed. One tank, one valve. Paired with the five-stage reverse-osmosis tap, it is the ZeroGrain One.
Best for: most three- and four-bedroom homes, on city water or a low-iron well
Details and specs →Worth knowing
Why this matters
What county wells draw
Groundwater here moves through dolomite and sandstone, and it comes out hard: the town wells mostly run 14 to 35 grains per gallon in published and state-sampled figures, well past the 10.5 where the USGS scale starts calling water very hard, and iron often comes along with it. That is orange staining in tubs, scale in heaters, and soap that never quite lathers.
How much it varies is the part people underestimate. Delafield’s two municipal wells, sampled the same day, read 240 and 400 milligrams per liter: 14.0 grains and 23.4. If two municipal wells a few thousand feet apart differ that much, two private wells on the same road can too.
A word about the deep aquifer
The deep sandstone aquifer under Waukesha County has a documented history of naturally occurring radium, one of the two reasons, with a falling aquifer, that the City of Waukesha spent a decade winning Lake Michigan water. Private wells vary enormously by depth and location. Nothing on this site is sold as radium treatment, and a quote says so plainly if your lab result shows it.
Any lab result you already have goes into the quote. On install day the plumber tests hardness, iron, pH and TDS at your tap before anything is connected. The build is set at the quote, from the call and any lab result you have; if the install-day reading calls for a different one, it comes as a written change order you can decline before any work starts. For bacteria and nitrates we recommend Wisconsin’s state-certified labs and can point you to them. Those lab tests are not something we sell, and any reputable water company will tell you the same.
Treating a well house
Well water is where sizing matters most, because hardness and iron vary house by house rather than neighborhood by neighborhood. A system specified from your actual numbers treats the hardness at the point of entry, and where iron is more than a trace it gets its own stage ahead of the softener. A reverse-osmosis tap at the sink gives you a dedicated drinking-water faucet.
After a softener install the plumber runs the same test again and you watch the hardness read zero.
Free quote, by phone
Every well is different. Tell us about yours, for nothing.
One short call, about fifteen minutes. We size from your town’s published number, or your well’s lab result, and your household, and you end the call with a one-page itemized quote.
- Free quote by phone
- Installed by a licensed WI plumber
- Softeners retested to zero