Water Treatment

Southern Idaho water runs hard. Municipal supply in Twin Falls typically tests between 15 and 25 grains per gallon; wells in Jerome, Gooding, and out toward Buhl often push higher, with added iron and manganese pulled from basalt-aquifer rock. Left untreated, that hardness plates the inside of your water heater, chokes shower heads, and shortens the life of every appliance that touches water — dishwashers, ice makers, washing machines, and coffee makers all pay the price.

A properly sized softener fixes it at the source. We start with a free in-home water test so we're specifying against your actual grain count, not a guess. From there we match capacity to household size and daily usage — undersizing means the resin regenerates too often and wastes salt; oversizing costs more up front for capacity you'll never use. Most of our installs are metered on-demand valves (Fleck 5810 XTR2, Clack WS1, or the Hague Watermax proprietary head) so the system only regenerates when it actually needs to, not on a fixed clock.

Installation is a same-day job for most homes. We tie into the main line after the pressure regulator and before the water heater, add a bypass valve so future service is a five-minute swap, and route the brine tank drain to code. Loop or garage installs are standard; crawl-space and mechanical-room jobs are just as common. We handle the plumbing, the electrical, the drain, and the salt fill on the first visit, and we walk you through the head programming before we leave.

Financing is available through our Financing page for whole-house installs — most families spread the system across 12 to 36 months at a payment that's less than what they were already spending on bottled water and appliance repairs.

A whole-house softener handles hardness. It doesn't handle taste, chlorine byproducts, dissolved solids, nitrates, or the metallic edge a lot of well water carries. That's what a reverse osmosis system is for — a four- or five-stage under-sink unit that runs your drinking and cooking water through a semipermeable membrane and drops total dissolved solids from 300–500 ppm down to under 20 ppm.

We install RO systems from Hellenbrand, WaterCare, and Hague under the kitchen sink, with an optional line run to the refrigerator ice maker and door dispenser. Standard configuration is sediment pre-filter, carbon pre-filter, RO membrane, and a polishing carbon post-filter, with an air-gap faucet on the sink deck. Systems produce roughly 50 gallons per day — more than enough for a family of four's drinking, cooking, coffee, and ice.

Yearly filter changes take about twenty minutes. We stock every filter and membrane for the systems we sell, so when it's time to swap you're not waiting on a shipment. We can also set you up on a service-reminder list so we call you when it's due — see our Follow-ups process on the service page.

A standard softener will pull a small amount of iron out of the water, but if you're seeing orange staining on tubs or laundry, or catching a rotten-egg smell when you first turn on the tap, you've got iron or hydrogen sulfide above what a softener alone can handle. In those cases we install a dedicated iron filter (typically a Katalox Light or air-injection oxidizing bed) ahead of the softener so the softener isn't fighting a load it wasn't designed for.

For homes on shallow wells or older mainline pipe, we add a spin-down sediment pre-filter to catch grit before it reaches the softener or RO. It's a small addition on the front end that meaningfully extends the life of everything downstream.

If your well has ever tested positive for coliform bacteria, or if you're on a shared or shallow well in Cassia, Minidoka, Blaine, or the outlying valleys, UV disinfection is the right answer. UV kills bacteria and viruses at the point of entry — no chlorine, no chemicals, no taste change. It's the same technology municipal water treatment plants use, sized down to household flow.

We install the Nelsen UV series alongside a five-micron pre-filter (UV needs clean water to work — sediment will shadow bacteria and let them through). The lamp is a yearly replacement, the quartz sleeve gets cleaned at the same visit, and a monitor on the unit tells you at a glance that it's operating in-spec.

For homes on a well that also carries iron or hardness, we install UV as the final stage after softening and iron filtration — the water reaches the lamp already clean, and the lamp lasts its full service life.

Most water problems are invisible until they've already damaged something. Hardness shows up as scale; iron shows up as orange stains; sulfur shows up as a rotten-egg smell. But pH, total dissolved solids, nitrates, manganese, and coliform bacteria don't announce themselves — they need a test. That's why we start every water-treatment conversation with a free in-home water test, not a sales pitch.

Our test covers the basics that matter for southern Idaho homes: hardness (grains per gallon), iron (ferrous and ferric), pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), and a visual check for sediment and odor. If your home is on a well or has never been tested, we can also guide you through a certified lab sample for bacteria, nitrates, arsenic, or other contaminants that require a third-party lab report.

The test takes about twenty minutes. We'll explain the results in plain English, show you exactly what each number means for your fixtures and appliances, and recommend only the equipment that fixes the problems we can confirm. If your water is fine, we'll tell you that too. There's no charge and no obligation — just useful information from a shop that's been testing Magic Valley water since 1993.

Same-day appointments are usually available within a day or two. Call the shop at (208) 733-2504 or request an estimate through the form on this page and we'll get you scheduled.