[pwthornton]

Some of us grew up on well water. It's generally fine, although you need to inspect and treat it regularly, and if one of your neighbors really messes up his well, it can affect the whole water table around him too. My digestive track always gets a little messed up when I visit my parents back home (although this could also be from the water being treated for hardness).

If you were really interested in non-municipal water, the best route to go would be some sort of filtered reverse osmosis setup or something similar, of which you most certainly do not need a Silicon Valley snake oil salesman for. You can also get a home system to make distilled water just for drinking that won't cost that much.

Honestly, the biggest issue that the average person could have with municipal water is it being overly hard. I might get a filtration system in our new place to deal with that. I might also be tempted to get some kind of filtration system for water just for my coffee and tea, simply for taste reasons.

[nkrisc]

Yes, well water is generally fine but as you mentioned, there's quite a bit that can be done to make it even safer, which this company apparently neglects, as a selling point.

>My digestive track always gets a little messed up when I visit my parents back home

Not necessarily dangerous, but also not an experience I'd pay $6/gallon for.

[schiffern]

>Some of us grew up on well water. It's generally fine, although you need to inspect and treat it regularly

You need to inspect it (the CDC recommends annually sending away for a water test[1]), but I'm aware of no EPA or CDC recommendation that calls for unconditionally treating the water. You treat well water only if the tests find a problem.

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/wells/testi...

https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/private/wells/trea...

[bluGill]

I can safely drink my well water, but it tastes a lot better if I treat it via my RO system.

My well water tests high for nitrates, as a healthy adult this is not a problem, but giving my water to babies will kill them. By only drinking the treated water I make accidents less likely because all my habits are to tell people don't drink the water except for the filtered drinking water.

[pwthornton]

This is true. It's just that you usually find some issues every few years that you at least need to throw some chlorine in the well.

[jimmaswell]

We never did anything to the water wells at places we lived in for 10+ years. Were we just lucky?

[jaggederest]

> My digestive track always gets a little messed up when I visit my parents back home

FWIW, as you mention, if it's hard water this is most likely the culprit. Frequently hard water will have high sulfate levels and sulfate (as in saline laxatives) is not generally well absorbed by the human gut.

[oh_sigh]

My parents home has a well into the kirkwood-cohansey aquifer, with no filters at all, and it is some of the best tasting water I've ever had. Literally the only thing in my life that has beaten it was glacial runoff in the Wapta ice fields