Does your water smell funny? Water odor problems in Berryville, VA aren’t unheard of, but they do happen. In many cases, when they occur, the people living in homes experiencing the issue respond by resigning themselves to making regular trips to the nearest grocery store and buying cases of bottled water so they don’t have to drink the stuff coming out of their taps.
It’s an understandable response, but it’s not a very efficient or effective one. After all, if you’re on city water, then you’re paying for water service anyway, and you’re paying again each time you go buy another case of water. Granted, water by the case isn’t very expensive, but there is an additional cost involved, and if you could get to the bottom of what’s causing the water odor in your Berryville, VA home, then you could save however much you’re spending on bottled water every month, which is essentially money in your pocket.
The same basic equation holds true if you live outside of town and get your water from a well or spring located somewhere on your property. You’re still paying, it’s just that in those cases, the cost of the well was factored into the price of your home when you bought it.
We’re not saying buying cases of water is an outright bad plan, but it should be considered a temporary, stopgap solution until you can trace the odor issue back to its source and correct for it.
The simple truth is that most people don’t tend to think much, if at all, about their water supply until and unless there’s a problem, so many people, especially those on city water, have never even considered having their supply tested. That too, is understandable. After all, the general thinking is that if you live in town, then the city has people who do that sort of thing so you don’t have to.
The reality is a little more complicated. While it’s certainly true that the city has people who ostensibly look after the water supply, municipalities are not mandated to provide odorless water to the citizens they serve. Their only mandate is to provide safe drinking water, but even then, the definition of safe is so broad that it essentially means ‘water that won’t outright kill you.’
If you want a bit more than that from the water coming out of your tap, then even if you live in town, we recommend having your water tested at least once a year, and again any time you detect any sort of problem, and water odor in your Berryville, VA home certainly qualifies. The reality is that municipalities often struggle to meet the EPA’s mandate, even with the incredibly broad definition of safe, as the fine folks of Flint, Michigan can attest to.
The problem is not isolated to just Flint, however. According to the EPA’s own statistics on the matter, there are, right now, more than a thousand communities scattered all across the nation that are facing water issues as bad, if not worse than the one experienced by the people of Flint, which only underscores the importance of periodic testing.
On that front, there’s good news. As the region’s largest and most respected independent lab, nobody knows more about water testing than we do, and our company is perfectly positioned to help you trace whatever water issues you’re having back to their root cause, so you can take steps to correct the issue, giving you tremendous peace of mind and one less thing to worry about.
It’s also worth mentioning that as unpleasant as water odor in your Berryville, VA home may be, it’s certainly not the worst problem you could have. There are some water issues that can make you sick or even kill. If you live near an area where there’s heavy agriculture activity, for example, you may discover that high concentrations of nitrates have entered your water supply.
If you live outside of town and get your water from a well, your property may have once seen a lot of activity that involved farm equipment that ran on leaded gasoline, and the lead from those long-ago engines may still be in your water supply, slowly poisoning anyone who drinks it.
Another possibility, and the one that winds up being one of the most common causes of water odor issues in Berryville, VA is that somehow or another, concentrations of sulfur will wind up collecting in your water supply. It smells awful, but sulfur in your water generally won’t hurt you unless the concentrations are so high that the smell makes it undrinkable. Even so, it can still lead to diarrhea and/or dehydration, so those facts, on top of the nasty smell, make it a problem well worth fixing.
All that to say that testing is a lot more important than most people realize, and with a dozen different tests on offer, we can help with that.
If you want the peace of mind that comes with knowing exactly what is, and isn’t in your water, just give us a call and let us know what kinds of issues you’re experiencing. Our experienced technicians will ask you questions designed to clarify the issue and guide you toward one or more water tests that will help you get to the root cause of whatever issue you’re experiencing.
That done, we’ll send you sample collection kits. Don’t worry, the sample collection process is super simple and won’t take more than a few minutes of your time. Once you’ve collected water samples for testing, just mail them back to the lab and we’ll get to work. In short order, you’ll have the information you need to begin taking steps to correct the issue. It really is as simple as that!
The bottom line is that you don’t have to just live with water that smells bad, or tastes funny, or stains your teeth when you brush them or drink the water coming out of your tap, or stains your clothes when you do laundry. Those are all fairly common problems whose root causes can be identified by the tests we offer, and once you know exactly what’s causing the issue, there’s usually a pretty simple, or at least straightforward way to fix it.
You also don’t want to take any chances where your health, or the health of your family is concerned, so if you even suspect that you may be having some type of issue with your water, it’s well worth taking the time to get it tested. If nothing else, you can rule it out as the source of the unexplained illness.
One final thing that’s worth mentioning here is kind of a hidden benefit associated with regular water testing. The initial water test serves as a kind of baseline. It gives you a starting point and something to compare future years against. If you find a problem when you test initially, then the next time you test, you’ll be able to compare the original profile of your water with the new one. If whatever you did to fix the issue was effective, you should see that expressed as a change in the profile of your water.
If your remediation strategy didn’t work, or didn’t completely solve the issue, you’ll see that too, because you’ll still see elevated levels of something in your water that shouldn’t be there, which is a sign that more work is needed.
The other big advantage that testing at regular intervals gives you is this: Once you’ve gotten all the funky smells out of your water and it tastes fresh, clean and refreshing, you’ll have a snapshot of what good water looks like in the form of your water profile, but over time, stuff happens and you can bet that the character of the water coming out of your tap will change.
When it does, you’ll be able to spot those changes by looking at the testing data, which will reveal problems often long before you can smell or taste any sort of issue, and again, it’s worth remembering that some serious water problems don’t have a particular smell or taste associated with them, so without periodic testing, you’d simply never know until the issue got bad enough to start making one or more members of your family sick.
Don’t let it come to that. Let us help you keep your family safe, and let us help you enjoy the fresh, clean water you deserve. Give our office a call today and let’s get started. We’re looking forward to giving you the peace of mind that comes with knowing exactly what’s in the water you’re drinking.