The Importance of Water Filtration in Lake Norman Homes

The area around Lake Norman is unusual in one way that matters for water: it is split. The subdivisions closest to Charlotte and the lake towns along the shore are largely on municipal supply, which arrives treated and disinfected. Head out into Lincoln, Iredell or Catawba County and a lot of homes are on their own wells, drawing untreated water straight out of the ground.

On city water the complaints are consistent. The taste and smell of the disinfectant, and the scale it leaves behind: soap that will not lather, film on glassware, deposits on the shower head and in the kettle, and a taste at the kitchen tap that makes a household start buying bottled water.

On a well the list is different. Iron that stains sinks, tubs and laundry orange. Sediment that shows up in the aerators. A rotten-egg smell from hydrogen sulfide. Hardness that varies from one well to the next, sometimes sharply. None of it is treated before it reaches the house, because nothing sits between the well and the tap.

The house is the variable, not the street. Two homes on the same road can behave differently at the tap because of what is behind their walls. A lake cottage that has never been repiped and a townhome finished last year draw the same water and deliver a different glass of it.

Point-of-entry treatment protects everything downstream. That is the argument for treating where the water enters the house rather than at one faucet: the water heater, the dishwasher and the plumbing itself are what scale and iron actually cost you, long before anyone notices the glassware.

The straight answer is that nobody can tell you what your house needs without testing your water. That is where we start.