Read your well water test
Paste in the numbers from your lab report. You get plain English for each one, judged against the published EPA limit, and the treatment train it implies.
The short answer
A well water test is read in two passes. First the health results — coliform bacteria, nitrate and arsenic — which decide whether the water is safe to drink at all. Then the nuisance results — hardness, iron, manganese, pH and sulfur — which decide what equipment you need and, crucially, what order to install it in.
Your results will appear here.
Enter whatever your report lists — you don’t need all of it. Each result is judged against the published EPA limit, and the treatment order at the bottom updates as you type.
How to read the report you were sent
Lab reports are written for regulators, not homeowners, so they bury the two things you actually need to know: which results break a limit, and which limit it was. Those are not the same question.
Primary standards (MCLs) are health-based and legally enforceable for public water systems. Nitrate, arsenic and coliform bacteria are the ones that come up on private wells. If one of these is exceeded, that is a health problem, and it outranks everything else on the page.
Secondary standards (SMCLs) are aesthetic — taste, colour, smell and staining. Iron, manganese, sulfate, chloride, TDS and pH live here. Exceeding one of these is annoying and sometimes expensive, but it is not dangerous. Vendors are not always careful about that distinction, because alarm sells equipment.
Private wells are not covered by either standard — nobody is enforcing anything on your water. The limits are still the right benchmark to hold it to; they are simply advisory for you rather than mandatory.
If your units don't match
The one conversion that trips people up is hardness. Labs report it either as grains per gallon or as mg/L of calcium carbonate, and the numbers look wildly different for the same water.
- 1 grain per gallon = 17.1 mg/L. So 200 mg/L is about 11.7 gpg — hard water, not catastrophic water.
- mg/L and ppm are the same thing for drinking water. Some labs use one, some the other.
- Nitrate is reported two ways — as nitrate-N or as nitrate. The EPA limit of 10 mg/L is for nitrate-N. As total nitrate, the equivalent is about 45 mg/L. Check which one your report uses before you panic.
Why the order matters more than the equipment
The most expensive mistake in well water treatment is not buying the wrong equipment. It is buying the right equipment and installing it in the wrong sequence, which is common enough that it deserves stating plainly:
- An acid neutraliser goes before an iron filter, because oxidising media barely works below pH 7. Fit them the other way round and the iron filter underperforms from day one.
- Iron removal goes before the softener, because iron fouls the resin. Most manufacturers void the warranty for it.
- UV goes last. Cloudy or iron-bearing water physically shields bacteria from the lamp, so UV on unfiltered water gives you a disinfection system that does not disinfect.
- Reverse osmosis is point of use, under one sink. Running a whole house through RO wastes water and strips minerals out of water you are only going to shower in.
What this tool cannot tell you
It reads numbers you type in. It has no way to know whether the sample was taken properly, whether it went to a certified lab, or whether the well has changed since. Those things matter more than any interpretation.
Health & safety
If your test shows coliform bacteria, nitrate above 10 mg/L, or arsenic above 0.010 mg/L, treat that as a health matter rather than a shopping decision. Stop drinking the water, contact your county or state health department — most offer free or subsidised retesting — and get confirmation from a certified lab before you spend anything on equipment. Boiling does not fix nitrate; it concentrates it.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I test my well water myself?
- Home strips are fine for hardness, pH and iron — the things that decide what equipment you need. They are not adequate for bacteria, nitrate or arsenic, where the whole point is detecting small amounts reliably. Use strips to size a softener; use a certified lab to decide whether the water is safe.
- Can I get my well water tested for free?
- Often, yes. Many county health departments run free or low-cost testing for coliform bacteria and nitrate, sometimes seasonally. It is worth a phone call before paying a private lab, though free programmes usually cover only those two analytes and not the full panel.
- How often should well water be tested?
- Annually for coliform bacteria and nitrate, and after anything that could have changed the well — flooding, nearby construction, a new septic system, or any sudden change in taste, smell or colour. A full chemical panel every three to five years is reasonable unless something changes.
- Does an FHA or VA loan require a well water test?
- Yes. Both require a water quality test on properties served by a private well, typically covering coliform bacteria, nitrate and nitrite, and sometimes lead depending on the state. The exact panel is set locally, so the lender or the local health authority is the one to ask — and the sample usually has to be drawn by a third party rather than the seller.
- My report has a result this tool doesn't cover. Does that matter?
- Not necessarily. Full panels often include a dozen analytes that are almost always well within limits — calcium, magnesium, sodium, alkalinity, conductivity. They are useful context for a water treatment professional, but they rarely change what you buy. The analytes here are the ones that do.