Moving to Bryan soon and am wanting a read on the public water quality. Is it hard or soft. Mineral deposits on the plumbing fixtures after a while?

Do people use the water direct from the pipe or is it advisable to use a filter or water softener?

Just wanting a head start - would be great if the first cup of coffee in the new house tasted good.

Thanks in advance!

Reverse osmosis. Both towns. YWIA

There is a report posted somewhere. High sodium.

Been drinking it through a maytag filter for 25 years and I'm still alive.

We buy bottled water. Our water tastes terrible. And you can't get the soap off in the shower.

The one great thing about our water is that wherever you go on vacation, the water is always better than home.

Somebody above mentioned Jacobs well. Is that a pretty good way to do it? I've been living in the Wellborn area for about 8 years and buying bottled water because the tap is no go. Do they sell dispensers too?

Culligan

From Egret's link:


Our water meets all the guidelines to be considered safe. It does have lots of carbonate and salt, and it's quite alkaline. If you're drinking it straight out of the tap, it tastes a little too salty to be pleasant but it's certainly not harmful. Chlorine is also quite high, so if you're trying to grow bacteria with the water (ie: Beer brewing), you'll need to filter out the chlorine. If you're gardening with it, you'll need to amend the soil PH and avoid using any sort of a fertilizer or pesticide that contains additional salt.

Yes, a house reverse osmosis (RO) filter makes the drinking water taste much better. The little pitcher filters don't cut the salt though, so they're not much help.

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avoid using any sort of a fertilizer or pesticide that contains additional salt.

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Lol. Fertilizer is salt.

Old timers used to tell me to add powdered gypsum around the base of plants, which they claimed mitigated the harsh effects of the local water. Can't recall if it made a difference or not.

Gypsum (and other sulfate salts) will reduce the ph and prevent nutrient insolubility caused by our high ph water.

Thanks. I'm going to go back to using it.

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Lol. Fertilizer is salt.

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Manure is salt?

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Lol. Fertilizer is salt.

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Manure is salt?

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Nutrients in manure are generally unavailable in organic form. They have to be mineralized into salts before the plants can access them.

So, I say again. Fertilizer is salt.

+1 Culligan. $29/month. We use it for coffee, drinking, even the dog's water. I can't see us ever getting rid of it. We're on Wellborn Water, pretty sure it's even worse than COCS/COB.

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I worked in a greenhouse on campus during grad school. The municipal water will kill plants if you don't leach regularly. We went through hundreds of gallons of RO daily

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Same here. Watering my greenhouse plants with tap water would basically destroy the entire house within a week.

And he's not wrong. Plants don't take up "manure", they take up the nutrients found in manure, most of which are found as salts, i.e. ammonium nitrate or potassium oxide.

So, if the water is so contaminated that it will kill plants...what is it doing to us?

Our organs, our teeth, etc.?

A colleague's blood pressure went from "high" back to "normal" after he stopped drinking it regularly. Coincidence perhaps.

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So, if the water is so contaminated that it will kill plants...what is it doing to us?

Our organs, our teeth, etc.?

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Contaminated?

We're not talking arsenic or nuclear waste. It's high in baking soda and table salt.

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+1 Culligan. $29/month. We use it for coffee, drinking, even the dog's water. I can't see us ever getting rid of it. We're on Wellborn Water, pretty sure it's even worse than COCS/COB.

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Buy this and save yourself ~$300/yr after the first year.

http://airwaterice.com/drinking-water-system/mini-under-sink-ro-system-50gpd.html

This thread is timely. We are moving to College Station at the end of the month and will be on Wellburn water. The house has a swimming pool and we were thinking about converting to a salt water pool - have loved the one we have now in Houston. Someone said that salt water pools don't work well in CS due to the water. Has anyone experienced that?

Bryan Water = AWFUL TASTE

College Station = Marginally better

Wellborn Water = Best tasting but the occasional "oops we let some XXX chemical out in higher ppm than tolerable by TCEQ standards" letter that comes out.




As other posters have said ...... "HEY CULLIGAN MAN !!"

Wellborn water! Are you kidding? The water is so bad right now, it burns my eyes when I shower and sure can't drink it. I've been using it for 8 years and have never been able to drink it. I went to Jacobs Well this morning and bought a dispenser and a months worth of water for drinking and coffee. 40 cents a gallon.

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So, if the water is so contaminated that it will kill plants...what is it doing to us?

Our organs, our teeth, etc.?

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And to think I thought this entire time my wife was not watering plants and that was killing them only to find out she may have been watering them and that is really killing them.

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This thread is timely. We are moving to College Station at the end of the month and will be on Wellburn water. The house has a swimming pool and we were thinking about converting to a salt water pool - have loved the one we have now in Houston. Someone said that salt water pools don't work well in CS due to the water. Has anyone experienced that?

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I have a salt water pool, on Wellborn Water. Won't ever have a chlorine pool again. Had ZERO problems with it.

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Wellborn water! Are you kidding? The water is so bad right now, it burns my eyes when I shower and sure can't drink it. I've been using it for 8 years and have never been able to drink it. I went to Jacobs Well this morning and bought a dispenser and a months worth of water for drinking and coffee. 40 cents a gallon.

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I'll admit that I haven't actually tasted Wellborn water since we got our Culligan system a couple of years ago.....

I think our water tastes fine in relation to water sources from most lakes. We ate in Waco once and the chicken and dumplings tasted terrible, just like the terrible water served before the meal.

My wife is from South Dallas, the water supply is horrible, to the point that it makes the sodas and teas undrinkable as well. It makes me appreciate our water, as salty and chlorinated as it is. We drink ours from the fridge filtered water dispenser. It's a bit better, but not RO.

It comes and goes. I don't know why they can't get it stabilized.

Wellborn SUD water is about 50% well water (out of a different aquifer than BTU or CSU) and 50% from the Navasota River, here: https://goo.gl/maps/2cqFc3Js7c82
In fact, here's TCEQ's page about Wellborn SUD

The Navasota river's water quality is very seasonal. It's muddy when the flowrate is high, and salty when the flowrate is low. Other entities with seasonal variations in water quality (Amarillo comes to mind) suffer similar inconsistencies. It takes a wholly different set of treatment setups to do their spring (alum) vs summer (vs fall flows. Also, they recently had to install a rather large, VERY expensive UV disinfection system. Did your water taste get better about 16-18 months ago?