Understanding the journey your water takes before it reaches your faucet

If your home has a private well, every time you turn on the faucet, you’re drawing water from beneath your property. But where exactly does that water come from?

Many people picture an underground river or a giant lake beneath their home. In most cases, that’s not how groundwater works.

Well water begins with precipitation—rain and, in some regions, melting snow—that slowly makes its way into the ground.

As water moves downward through soil, sand, gravel and cracks in rock, some eventually reaches underground formations capable of storing and transmitting water.

This groundwater is what your well taps into.

What Is Groundwater?

Groundwater is simply water found beneath the Earth’s surface.

After rain reaches the ground, some water runs off into creeks, rivers and lakes. Some evaporates or is taken up by plants. And some infiltrates the soil and moves deeper underground.

Eventually, that water can reach an area where the spaces and cracks within soil, sediment and rock are saturated with water. The upper boundary of this saturated area is commonly called the water table.

What Is an Aquifer?

You may have heard the term aquifer when talking about wells. An aquifer isn’t necessarily a giant underground cavern filled with water.

Instead, an aquifer is a body of permeable rock, sediment, sand or gravel that can store and transmit groundwater.

One way to picture it is a container filled with sand and gravel. Water occupies the spaces between the individual particles. Underground, groundwater can move through these spaces and through fractures in rock—sometimes very slowly.

How Does Water Get Into Your Well?

A modern residential well typically consists of a drilled hole with a casing extending into the ground. Groundwater enters the well, and a pump moves the water through piping to the home.

The basic journey looks something like this:

Rainfall → Ground → Soil & Rock → Aquifer → Well → Pump →  Water Treatment → Your Home

That entire journey can influence the water that eventually comes from your faucet.

Why Does Well Water Contain Minerals?

This is where well water becomes especially interesting.

As groundwater moves through soil and underground rock formations, it comes into contact with naturally occurring minerals.

Some of those minerals can dissolve into the water.

Depending on the local geology, well water may contain varying amounts of:

• Calcium
• Magnesium
• Iron
• Manganese
• Silica
• Other naturally occurring minerals and dissolved substances

Calcium and magnesium, for example, are primarily responsible for what we call hard water.

The longer water interacts with certain mineral-rich formations, the more opportunity it may have to pick up dissolved minerals. That’s one reason groundwater can be considerably harder in some areas than in others.

Why Can Two Nearby Wells Have Different Water?

This surprises many homeowners.

Your neighbor’s well water isn’t necessarily the same as yours.

Two wells relatively close to one another can have different depths, encounter different geological formations or draw groundwater under different conditions.

One property might have very hard water. Another might have elevated iron or manganese. Another might have different pH or total dissolved solids.

Even the characteristics of the same well can change over time.

That’s why it’s difficult to determine the right water-treatment equipment based solely on what another homeowner in the neighborhood is using.

Every well is different.

Is Well Water Naturally Filtered?

To an extent, yes—but this deserves an important distinction.

As water moves through layers of soil, sediment and rock, those materials can provide some natural filtration.

But natural filtration does not guarantee that groundwater is free of contaminants or suitable for drinking without testing.

Groundwater can contain naturally occurring substances, and contaminants can also enter groundwater from activities occurring above or below ground.

Private well owners are generally responsible for monitoring the quality of their own drinking water.

That’s why periodic well-water testing is important.

Who Is Responsible for Testing Private Well Water?

Unlike a municipal water system, a private residential well generally isn’t being continuously monitored by a public water utility for the homeowner.

The well owner is responsible for understanding and maintaining the quality of the water.

The EPA recommends that private wells be tested annually for total coliform bacteria, nitrates, total dissolved solids and pH, with additional testing depending on local conditions and potential contaminants.

Your local health or environmental health department may also provide guidance about contaminants that are particularly important to test for in your area.

Why Water Testing Matters Before Choosing Treatment

Testing is especially important if you’re considering water-treatment equipment.

A water softener, for example, is primarily designed to remove hardness minerals such as calcium and magnesium.

But your well may have other conditions that need to be addressed.

Iron, manganese, sediment, unusual odors, low or high pH and other water-quality concerns can require different treatment approaches.

That’s why there really isn’t a universal “well-water system.”

The treatment should be selected for the water.

From the Ground to Your Glass

Your well water has already been on quite a journey before it reaches your kitchen.

It may have started as rainfall, traveled through layers of soil and rock, entered an underground aquifer and eventually been pumped hundreds of feet—or more or less, depending on the well—to your home.

Along the way, that water interacts with the geology surrounding it.

And that’s what makes well water unique.

Understand Your Water Before You Treat It

At Matilija Pure Water Systems, we believe the first step in treating well water is understanding what’s actually in it.

Once you understand your water chemistry, the appropriate equipment can be selected to address the specific needs of your property—whether that’s hardness, iron, manganese, sediment or other water-quality concerns.

And when highly treated water is desired specifically for drinking and cooking, reverse osmosis can provide an additional point-of-use treatment step at the kitchen sink.

Every well is different. Your water treatment should be too.

Simply Better Water.Matilija Pure Water Systems