Equipment

Well water treatment equipment

Each page covers what the equipment removes, what it costs to run, and the water conditions that defeat it. That last part decides most purchases.

• Sediment filters for well water

  $120–$900

  Catches the physical debris a well produces before it reaches anything expensive. On sandy wells this is the difference between a treatment train that lasts a decade and one that fails in a season.

• Reverse osmosis for well water

  $250–$900

  Pushes water through a membrane fine enough to reject dissolved salts and most contaminants. Under the kitchen sink it is the most capable treatment available for water that is going to be drunk.

• Activated carbon filters for well water

  $300–$1,500

  Adsorbs organic compounds, chlorine and the things that make water taste and smell wrong, on a bed of carbon with an enormous internal surface area. It is the polishing stage, and it is mandatory behind any chemical injection.

• UV disinfection for well water

  $400–$1,200

  Passes water along a quartz sleeve containing an ultraviolet lamp, which scrambles the DNA of anything living in it. No chemicals, no taste change, nothing added to the water.

• Acid neutralizers for low-pH well water

  $600–$1,600

  Passes water through a bed of calcite, or calcite blended with magnesia, which dissolves slowly and raises pH. It is the stage that makes an oxidising filter downstream work at all on acidic water.

• Water softeners for well water

  $700–$2,200

  Trades the calcium and magnesium that cause scale for sodium, on a resin bed that regenerates itself with brine. It is the right answer for hard water and the wrong answer for an iron problem, though it is sold for both.

• Air-injection iron filters for well water

  $900–$2,600

  The default choice for iron-bearing well water: it pulls in a pocket of air, oxidises dissolved iron as the water passes through it, and traps the resulting particles in a media bed that backwashes itself. No chemicals to buy or refill.

• Chlorine and peroxide injection systems

  $1,400–$3,800

  A metering pump injects chlorine or hydrogen peroxide, a retention tank gives the reaction time to finish, and a backwashing filter removes what it produced. It handles water that defeats air injection.