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Comment by xxpor | Hacker News Reader

As someone who grew up with well water, it tasted fine, but (at least for me based on local conditions), it was a huge pain in the ass.

Low pressure, extremely hard to the point where soap is useless and we had to replace things regularly from scale build up, the UV filter thing we had to run in the basement, the worry that one day you could randomly lose the prime on the pump and they'd have to dig to get it back (which happened once), no fluoride so my teeth aren't the best.

Give me that carbon filtered (removes the chlorine taste) city water any day :)

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Local conditions and probably equipment will make a difference in pressure. My well kicks on around 35 psi and off around 65, if I'm remembering right. Of course, it failed in the past year, no digging required, but it did take the better part of a day to pull up the old one, and attach a new one and lower it down. Plus one day of troubleshooting and a day of waiting for the pump to arrive didn't make a fun few days.

Installing a whole-house water softener completely cures this and is very cheap (at least in the USA).

I've talked to my parents about it multiple times but they're worried about the sodium content.

Potassium chloride water softening salt is more expensive, but unless you use way more water than we do, I don't find it to be an unreasonable expense.

I've been living in a place with a softener on a well for a while now. Many people have asked about salty water, but I don't find it to be an issue at all. I even prefer water from our softened tap over the unsoftened one. I don't notice rings or residue in my drinking glasses.

I think a common misconception is that your water runs through the salt. In reality, the water runs through a filter and the salt water is used to periodically flush the accumulated metals out of the filter. This could lead to some residual salt, but it will get flushed away quickly. The other source of salty water is a busted valve. Replace it and the water will be fine again.

It's not the taste, it's that they're worried about sodium in general (high blood pressure).

The salt is used for ion exchange. You trade calcium for sodium. So while you don't drink salt, it does have sodium.

...the worry that one day you could randomly lose the prime on the pump and they'd have to dig to get it back (which happened once)...

Where was this? Pumps are placed at the bottom of wells and avoid this problem entirely. It's physically impossible for a pump placed at the top to raise water more than 10m.

I'll second a reverse osmosis filter. We filter municipal water through one to get drinking water and, honestly, we're very happy with it. It's not as good as, you know, Swiss mountain water, but it's pretty close.

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