The questions we hear most often, with honest answers. Don’t see yours? Email hello@soundwaterco.com.
Your utility tests the water at the treatment plant. Then it travels miles through aging service lines, decades-old water mains, and your home's own plumbing — picking up contaminants the utility never sees. The CCR your utility publishes describes water leaving the plant; we test water arriving at your kitchen tap. Beyond that, federal limits haven't kept pace with health-based research. We always show both side by side and let you decide.
It varies by town and utility, but for most Aquarion-area homes the typical findings are chlorine byproducts (TTHMs and HAA5) at levels well below the federal limit but hundreds of times above EWG's health-based guideline, low-parts-per-trillion PFAS, and plumbing-borne lead/copper risk in pre-1986 homes. Leave us your email on the homepage and we'll send the profile for your specific address.
They're two different yardsticks. The federal legal limit is what the EPA allows by law — and those limits factor in treatment cost and feasibility, not health alone. The health-based guideline comes from the EWG (Environmental Working Group), an independent research nonprofit; it reflects what current health science would prefer, with no cost considerations, so it's almost always the stricter of the two. Federal limits also haven't kept pace — the EPA hadn't added a new drinking-water contaminant in over 25 years until the 2024 PFAS rule. We show both numbers side by side and let you decide where you're comfortable.
A pitcher filters one source — your kitchen sink. We install at the point your water enters the house, so every tap, every shower, every appliance gets filtered water. Whole-home filtration also has dramatically more contact time and capacity, which means it can reduce contaminants like PFAS, TTHMs, and HAA5 that pitcher-style filters can't address effectively.
About 2-3 hours for a typical home. Our licensed installer handles everything: installing the filter housing, plumbing it into your main water line, running the day-of field tests at your kitchen tap, and walking you through the system before they leave. You don't need to do anything except be home.
Equipment (whole-home filter housing, initial cartridges), professional installation, the pre-install test, the day-of field tests, the 30-60 day post-install test, and your side-by-side report. No surprise charges. We'll walk you through the full breakdown when you reach out.
No. The service plan is optional. You can install the system, take your side-by-side report, and call it a day — the filter will keep working. The plan covers quarterly cartridge shipments and twice-yearly hose-bib field tests so you have ongoing proof your system is still doing its job. Cancel any time.
Typically every 3-6 months depending on your water and household usage. The service plan handles this automatically — fresh cartridges arrive at your door on schedule. Without a plan, you can buy and swap cartridges yourself; we'll send a reminder when it's time.
Give us a call. If you're near our area we'll usually find a way to help; if you're not, we'll be straight with you about that too.
The whole-home system is plumbed into the house, so it stays with the property. If you move within our service area, we can install a new system at your new address with credit for any unused service-plan months. If your water profile is different, we'll re-test before designing the new install.
Workmanship warranty is provided by the licensed installer who does the install (industry-standard one-year coverage). Equipment warranty is provided by the manufacturer (varies by component, typically 1-5 years). Sound Water Co. acts as your single point of contact if anything goes wrong — we'll work with the installer and the manufacturer on your behalf.
Our standard panel covers the contaminants that show up in Connecticut surface-water utilities — PFAS, chlorine disinfection byproducts (TTHMs and HAA5), lead, copper, and a panel of volatile organic compounds. We're still finalizing the exact specifications and we'll walk you through them when you reach out.
Your outdoor hose bib is plumbed downstream of where we install the filter — so whatever comes out of that tap is filtered water. It lets us verify your system is still working without ever stepping inside your home, which is faster, less invasive, and lets us catch issues before you'd notice anything in the kitchen.
Technically possible, but not what we offer. We bundle installation, testing, and the side-by-side report into one professional service. The whole point of Sound Water Co. is that you don't have to figure any of this out yourself — we handle it end to end and prove it's working.
Leave us your email on the homepage — we'll send you your utility's typical profile, federal EPA limits and EWG health-based guidelines side by side. If you want detail on your specific tap, the pre-install test is bundled into the install; the test itself is one of the first things we do, before any equipment goes in. If the results show your water doesn't actually need filtration, we'd tell you.
Email us or call — we answer everything ourselves.