Well Water Treatment in
Central and Southeastern Ohio
From Culligan of Columbus

Less than people assume. Under Ohio's private water system rules your local board of health collects a sample after a well is built, altered or sealed, and analyzes it for total coliform and E. coli. Nitrate gets added only when a pre-screening finds 5 mg/L or more. Nothing else is required, and the rule calls for no periodic or ongoing sampling. Hardness, iron, manganese, sulfate and arsenic are not part of it.

Your county board of health, not the state. The Ohio Department of Health writes the rules and provides technical support, and the local health district does the permitting and the sampling. Athens County, for instance, permits every new, replacement and altered private water system in the county and tests for bacteria and nitrate, the same two things the state rule names.

It depends which side of the service area you are on. Ohio EPA's aquifer monitoring puts median hardness at about 450 mg/L, roughly 26 grains, in the carbonate bedrock that underlies the western and northern counties, against about 214 mg/L, roughly 12.5 grains, in sandstone. That is a fourteen grain spread across one dealership's territory. Those are public supply wells rather than houses, so treat the numbers as the shape of the problem and get your own.

Columbus is one of the few Ohio cities that softens its own water. The city reports softening to about 120 ppm on average, roughly 7 grains, using soda ash or caustic soda with hydrated lime, and its three plants come in between 92 and 125 mg/L. A well on the carbonate aquifer west or north of the city can run four times that, with nobody softening it before it reaches your heater.

Hydrogen sulfide, and in one part of this territory there is a specific geologic reason for it. The Ohio Shale belt runs north to south through Delaware County, western Licking, eastern Marion and Morrow and the north end of Franklin. The state's Division of Geological Survey describes water under that shale as very high in sulfur, hydrogen sulfide and iron, and warns that the quality gets more objectionable with depth. No agency publishes a figure for how many Ohio wells have sulfur odor, so we will not invent one, but if you are in that belt the geology is on the record. A sulfur filter removes it, and the method depends on your iron level.

Common enough that it is the default assumption. The USGS sampled 168 private residential wells in Licking County and found iron above the 300 microgram per liter standard in 71 percent of the 102 wells it tested for it. Wells in the glacial deposits were worse, at a 1,760 microgram median with 94 percent over the standard, against 403 and 63 percent for bedrock wells. That is actual household data from a county we serve.

It can carry a limited amount along with the hardness, but at the levels common here a dedicated iron filter is usually the right answer. Test iron, hardness and pH together before anyone sells you equipment, because which media works depends on all three.

It is worth one test. In that same Licking County study, 20 of 168 private wells were above the 10 microgram per liter limit, about 12 percent, and the highest result was 43.8. Wells in glacial deposits were three times more likely to exceed it than bedrock wells. It is odorless and tasteless, so nothing about your water tells you either way, and a softener does not remove it.

It is a documented hazard and an undocumented household risk, which is an awkward but honest combination. Ohio EPA says acid mine waters are a significant threat to groundwater in mined areas. But the state's guidebook on mine drainage in southeastern Ohio deals with streams and mine discharges rather than wells, and when the Division of Geological Survey assessed groundwater in Perry and Hocking Counties it stated that mined areas were not evaluated. Worth knowing: Ohio law requires a coal operator to replace the water supply of a property owner whose well is contaminated, diminished or interrupted by the mining, and to pay for water until it is replaced. If you are near old workings, a test is the only thing that answers the question for your address.

Usually not, it is geology. In the southeastern counties the Pennsylvanian bedrock is a modest aquifer. The state's assessment of Perry County describes the Pottsville and Allegheny units at 3 to 10 gallons a minute and the Conemaugh at under 3, and the Hocking County report says wells in those units are marginal for anything beyond a small household and may need extra storage or a cistern as backup. That changes how we size equipment, because a treatment system has to work with the flow the well can deliver. Tell us your yield when we visit.

Not meaningfully. Ohio EPA states that Ohio's geologic setting has few natural sources of radionuclides, and the exceptions it names are settings that are not used as aquifers. Statewide, only a handful of public water systems show any radionuclide impairment. It is not a central Ohio well water story and we are not going to sell it as one.

The sensible step is a baseline test before any drilling starts, which is what the Ohio Department of Natural Resources recommends and what Ohio State Extension publishes guidance on. Establishing what your water looked like beforehand is the only thing that makes a later comparison meaningful. Worth knowing too that dissolved methane in central Ohio groundwater is often natural. The Licking County arsenic work found methane-producing conditions occurring geologically, not industrially.

No. A properly functioning water softener will never make your water taste salty. The small amount of sodium added is far too little to create a salty taste.

Through ion exchange. As it removes the calcium and magnesium that make water hard, it replaces those ions one for one with sodium. The amount added is proportional to how hard your water is, and in most cases it isn't a significant contributor to the sodium in your diet.

Yes. Once a softener is installed it begins removing the scale that hard water built up. It takes a long time to clear, but it will clear.

Other than salt or potassium chloride, no. A softener reduces the cleaning supplies and detergents going down your drain, which makes it a net positive environmentally.

Modern softeners recharge based on how much water you use and how hard it is. Most of our customers add salt once or twice a year, though 26 grain water out in the carbonate country works a system harder than 12 grain water does.

Most well homes in this territory end up with both, because hardness and iron are separate problems with separate solutions. Whole home filtration paired with softening is the usual answer, with a drinking water system added when arsenic or dissolved solids show up.

Iron, sulfur and hardness are nuisance problems at the levels we usually find. Arsenic, nitrate and bacteria are health questions, each one a separate test, and worth running on any private well no matter what the result was the year the well went in. Start with a water test and we'll tell you honestly which category your results fall into.

Every recommendation we make starts with knowing what is in your water. The test is free, it happens at your house, and it takes about half an hour. You'll get your numbers explained in plain language and an honest answer about whether you need treatment at all.