Should You Connect to City Water if You Have a Well?

Even with city water supply, many people in Charlotte and the surrounding areas are still on well water. There are both drawbacks and benefits to being on either well or city water. So if you are considering switching to city water, you’ll want to ask yourself these questions.

1. How Often Do You Test Your Well Water?

Well water in generally is safe, that being said-the consequences of contamination isn’t worth the risk. Unless you have had the water tested very recently, you have no way of knowing whether your own water is still safe.

Around 255 million tons of hazardous chemicals are dumped in the US every year. These chemicals often seep into the water supply. The city water supply has experts constantly testing levels of toxic chemicals, most well water supply remains untested.

The risk of not testing is great because many of these chemicals have no taste or smell and thus can only be detected by specific. Unless you are willing to have your water tested on a regular schedule, switching to city water may be safest and easiest for you.

2. Do You Have Calcium Buildup in Your Fixtures?

Well water contains a great deal of minerals. Though most of these minerals are harmless to the human body, they can reek havoc on plumbing. The minerals often leave residues in pipes and fixtures, as well as on sinks, clothing, dishes, and anything that contacts the water. Once it builds up inside the valve bodies of your faucets and supply lines it can be expensive to replace.

If you notice that you have well water and also have plumbing problems, these two issues may be connected. When mineral deposits are reducing the space of your pipes, you will see lower water pressure, more clogging, and a variety of plumbing issues that low pressure and affect functionality.

3. No Water During Power Outages?

You may not think of this one, but with a well water supply, when you lose power you can’t pump the water into your home. Some areas around Charlotte lose electrical power more than others. The consequences of this can be a huge inconvenience if you are not hooked up to city water. Most well water systems generally requires an electric pump to keep water pressure in your plumbing, so a loss of power will lead to a loss of running water. Of course this may not be a big deal when your power is off for an hour or two, but it can be devastating in the event of a major storm that knocks out power for a couple days.

Also wells occasionally need to have water pumps and other hardware repaired or replaced. In some cases it can take days to find an available contractor and longer for the actual repair to occur. This could risk your family being without water for up to a week or more. Though it is easy enough to pick up a case of bottled water at the store to drink and cook, but living without bathing and flushing the toilet is very inconvenient.

4. Does Your Clothes Look Dirty?

Though a small consideration, this is an annoyance that bothers many people with well water. The minerals in well water make soaps and detergents less effective because of how they hinder absorption, so clothing often doesn’t get as clean in the laundry. If this happens for a while it can lead to staining as well as a generally dirtier appearance of your laundry. In addition, these minerals can cause extra wear and tear to your clothing. This makes clothing washed in hard water have to be replaced more often-and the costs of this can add up. The benefit of city water is that it undergoes processes that remove most of these minerals, so laundry is cleaner and brighter while lasting longer.

5. Could Your Well Run Dry?

There are wells that eventually go dry, often at inconvenient times. If this happens it will force you to hook up to city water, and to go without water while you are making the arrangements. With recent weather and the shifting water tables and drought, this is not a question of if so much as a question of when.

For many people in the Charlotte area, keeping a steady supply of water is more important than getting the last drop out of their well. If deciding to switch to city water will need to happen eventually, it is better to plan ahead and do it at a time when it is convenient to you, and at a time when you will still have access to well water until the transition is completed.