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Municipal drinking water has the disinfectants ammonia and chlorine. Almost all American drinking water also has added fluorine which is an effective rat poison. Note that fluoride is no longer used as a rat poison in America.
The British Fluoridation Society found that America uses more fluoride in its drinking water than the rest of the world combined.
The choice is yours. Do you want to consume rat poison? Even carbon is ineffective in removing fluoride.
Well water may be perfect. It may also contain arsenic, excessive iron, and a host of other minerals and chemicals....including fluoride.
These questions can not be answered without answering a lot of variables like water quality, depth of proposed well, and local costs of municipal services versus local contracting services and local codes.
In looking for houses in central/southern NH, all the houses I saw had drilled wells, several had systems to treat drinking water for radon, arsenic, or iron as well as acidity. Several had no treatment system, but none had only a water softener.
Thanks for the update...I was not aware of "unique" well water pH in NH.
The article is not extremely reader friendly though I did find your data in it. It seems that NH wells get a lot of rainwater instead of relying on bedrock water. Rainwater does tend to be acidic, especially around highly developed areas. Manufacturing tends to emit acidic particles that the rain drops capture. So do auto and truck emissions.
Radon is radioactive. I believe it is generally indicative of uranium which is commonly found with granite. Is New Hampshire also called the Granite State? Or is it Vermont? The geology of the two states almost has to be quite similar.
A water softener is almost pointless with acidic well water. Good chance I would opt for a pretty good water treatment system if using NH well water.
Something tells me that radon would be quite difficult to filter out. I suspect that R/O (reverse osmosis) may be effective though I am unsure.
At any rate, water treatment systems do require maintenance. All that I am aware of anyway...
Another thing....if dealing with acidic well water, I would strongly encourage one to find the source of the acid. If the acid is coming from a nearby septic system, it could easily be hazardous. Phosphates and nitrates would both be indicative of contamination from a septic system.
In looking for houses in central/southern NH, all the houses I saw had drilled wells, several had systems to treat drinking water for radon, arsenic, or iron as well as acidity. Several had no treatment system, but none had only a water softener.
I'm just glad that, unlike many states, New Hampshire is not running out of water, and does not have state control of the water supply.
The Anheuser-Busch brewery in Merrimack, NH makes 3,000,000 barrels of beer each year, producing most of the Budweiser consumed in New England, along with Bud Light and canned water (or is that redundant?). The Merrimack brewery runs all water through carbon filters, which remove PFOA and radon.
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Originally Posted by ColoGuy
Radon is radioactive. I believe it is generally indicative of uranium which is commonly found with granite. Is New Hampshire also called the Granite State? Or is it Vermont? The geology of the two states almost has to be quite similar.
A water softener is almost pointless with acidic well water. Good chance I would opt for a pretty good water treatment system if using NH well water.
For mildly acidic water, you run it through a bed of calcite (calcium carbonate). This neutralizes the acid, but adds calcium, so then you need a water softener even if you didn't before.
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Something tells me that radon would be quite difficult to filter out. I suspect that R/O (reverse osmosis) may be effective though I am unsure.
At low levels, treatment can be as simple as running the water through an activated carbon filter. But then you need to carefully dispose of mildly radioactive activated carbon. At higher levels of radon in water, aeration works by moving the radon into the air, where standard mitigation systems are effective.
We have well water with an RO unit and an old, deep cesspool that is still working fine. (Yes, in New Jersey!) The cost of a well can vary dramatically, as others have noted. Drilling into bedrock is going to cost a whole lot more than digging into South Jersey's soil. Also, our water table is pretty high, so our wells don't have to be dug deep. Our well is about 80 feet deep, and the one it replaced was only 25 feet deep. Drillers charge by the foot here.
We have the cesspool pumped once a year, which were told to do years ago, and it works just fine. (Previous owners apparently hardly ever pumped it.) Because our cesspool is so deep and holds so many gallons, it costs about $300-$325 (including taxes) to pump it. I have heard that septic systems (as opposed to cesspools) can go years without pumping, but can't speak from experience.
We have to treat our water for iron and we have to soften it, so once a year, we have that system serviced. Cost can be $100-200, depending on what we need done. Once in a while, we get a big bill, like $500-600, when we need everything: dump the neutralizer tank, replace RO (reverse osmosis) unit bladder and/or membrane, etc. It depends. Some people around here also have to treat for nitrates because we still have farms in my town. Our nitrates are on the high side, but the RO unit takes care of that.
We also have our water tested every 2-4 years, mainly looking for bacteria, volatile organic compounds, mercury. I would have to look up the cost for the testing, as I don't recall.
Now here's the kicker and here's where some research might be called for. Our state has mandated that no home can be sold with a cesspool unless it is replaced with a septic system. Either the buyer or seller can pay for it, but no CO will be issued until the system is replaced. Doesn't matter that our cesspool still works great and is quite a distance away from our well (well in front, cesspool in back). So the State of NJ has taken away about $25,000 of our retirement money with that law, passed in 2012. We will either have to install the septic system when we retire and move or we will have to take a lot less money for the house so the buyer can install the system. Sigh. Nothing we can do about it. The law is the law.
My advice would be to talk to your local health department and see what the rules are for well and septic. And call the NH DEP (or whatever they call it in NH) and see if there are any rules you need to know about. DON'T ask your realtor. I won't turn this into a realtor rant, but everything we asked our realtor about rural living (was rural when we moved here) -- we got an incorrect answer.
I just want to thank EVERYONE for all the great info!
Although much of what was written here was WAY over my head, at least I can let my husband see this thread. (He is much more of a science "techie" than I am!)
My last house was completely on well and septic. Both were newish, and I loved it.
Then I bought this older house. The house is on county water (public co-op) but the property has a well that services the outdoor spigots and my washer and dryer and the little rental house on the property.
The previous renter was a dummy and installed a water softener without the previous owner's permission. After she left (she was in the house for 22 years) I had the water softener removed and discovered that now I have an awful problem: the salts that water softeners use cause corrosion in galvanized metal pipes, and the water in the rental house is now rusty and full of particles. So now I have to either have new pipes put down over to the rental house or have that house piped to the rural water system. Either way it's several thousand dollars.
The moral of this story is: if your property has galvanized metal pipes, don't use a water softener.
I'd say there is less worry and bother to the homeowner on a public water system, unless the well, pipes and septic are fairly new.
I'll add another NH caution: if you have acid water, make sure the neutralizer is working properly in bringing the pH up. Acid water eats copper pipes as well as galvanized, so if you let your water go, you may have a big plumbing bill. I can tell you from experience that replacing pipes in walls is a messy job: cut holes in wall to find leak; cut bigger holes to fix leak; fix leak; patch wall; repaint, usually the whole room. It gets much more expensive if you're dealing with a tiled bathroom - how do you patch tile?
Wells and Septic are a local thing. And it can be highly local. We have septic and a 4 home community well. All been here for 35 years with no problems other than replacing the well pump every 10. Our well is reasonable deep...400 feet and we pump from around 250. Bill is less than $50 a month for electric per house and we end up putting up a couple of grand when the pump fails. Other places in town have water close to the surface but have much more trouble with flow rates. And other places wells have dried up and a hookup to the local water was required as new wells cannot be drilled. Our septic is about 35 year and gets pumped abount every 8 years.
Wells here are by the foot and reasonably expensive as it is mostly drilled through rock. The health district has an elaborate planning system. Basically a pain as the newer specs are incompatible with the old so any change requires replacement of the entire system at a cost that can run $30,000..
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Low pH water is not rare in New Hampshire
You may have already consumed granite state water
