An independent reference for private wells

Roughly 23 million American households drink from a private well. The Safe Drinking Water Act does not cover any of them. No utility tests that water, no regulator reviews the results, and no one is obliged to explain what the numbers mean.

What fills that gap online is mostly sales material. Manufacturers publish guides that conclude with their own equipment. Local dealers publish guides that conclude with a phone call. University extension services publish excellent material and then stop short of saying what to buy, which is reasonable for them and unhelpful at the moment someone is standing over a rust-stained sink.

WellWise Labs exists to close that last step: from a lab report to a specific treatment train, sized, in the right order, with the operating limit that decided each stage.

Where the numbers come from

Thresholds are cited to university extension services, the EPA, CDC, state health departments and published equipment specifications. Every citation carries the date it was checked. Where authorities disagree, and on several of these numbers they do, the page reports the range and who says what rather than inventing a consensus.

Nothing here is based on in-house laboratory testing, and the site never claims otherwise. The work is reading the standards carefully, reconciling them, and encoding the result.

Where it stops

Bacteria, nitrate, arsenic, uranium, radon and PFAS are health contaminants. Pages covering them explain what the standard is and route to a certified lab and the county or state health department. They do not end in a product recommendation, because that is not a decision to make from a web form.

The planner refuses in the same spirit. Water outside the range that packaged residential equipment is built for returns an explanation and a recommendation to get a system designed, rather than a confident answer that happens to be wrong.

How it makes money

Affiliate commissions, disclosed on the disclosure page. Recommendations are driven by the water chemistry, and the engine that produces them has no access to commission rates.