Water Softener Installation in Vail, CO

Eagle River Water and Sanitation District provides water service in Vail. According to the district, Vail customers receive treated drinking water from the alluvial aquifer of Gore Creek, which supplies the district's groundwater wells. The district reports that hardness in its treated water ranges from 160 to 350 mg/L, averaging about 250 mg/L, and that levels vary through the year as source water changes with the seasons. For comparison, the USGS classifies anything above 180 mg/L as very hard. That is enough to put scale on fixtures, in dishwashers and inside water heaters and boilers. The district itself describes 50 to 100 mg/L as the ideal range for drinking water. Our test reads hardness, chlorine, iron and total dissolved solids at your tap.

Hard water does its damage slowly and out of sight. Scale builds on heating elements and heat exchangers first, so a water heater or boiler can lose efficiency long before spots on the shower glass make the problem obvious. Because the district's hardness range is wide, from 160 to as high as 350 mg/L, a softener sized off a low-season reading may struggle later in the year; we size for the realistic high end. If your home sits empty for weeks at a time, water standing in the pipes is also worth flushing before use. Scale also shortens the life of faucet cartridges, showerheads and appliance valves, and it is the reason glass shower doors in hard-water homes cloud over so quickly. The free water test shows what is in your water at your own tap.