Well Water Treatment in
Denver, CO and Surrounding Areas
From Culligan of Denver

It matters more here than almost anywhere. The Denver Basin stacks four aquifers, Dawson, Denver, Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills, from shallowest to deepest, and they carry different water. Shallow Dawson wells range from soft to hard and are the most exposed to anything happening at the surface. The deep Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills are commonly soft but carry more sodium and dissolved solids, and the Laramie-Fox Hills is where sulfur odor turns up. Your well permit records the depth, and a water test fills in the rest.

A softener removes hardness and can carry a limited amount of iron along with it. If iron is your main problem you want a dedicated iron filter. Around here iron is a minority problem that is severe where it occurs, so the test result decides it rather than a rule of thumb.

Denver Water is not soft, and your well may not be hard, which catches a lot of people out. The city’s supply averages about 89 mg/L as calcium carbonate, roughly 5 grains per gallon, which is moderately hard. Deep Denver Basin wells are commonly soft on their own. The households that most often need softening here are on the South Platte alluvial corridor or near the edges of the basin, where the water runs much harder. A test answers it in half an hour, and sometimes the answer is that you don’t need one.

Not from a softener. A properly functioning water softener will never make your water taste salty, because the sodium it adds is far too little to taste. Worth knowing separately: deep Denver Basin wells carry naturally elevated sodium before any treatment, which is a reason some homeowners here choose reverse osmosis for drinking water.

Through ion exchange. As it removes the calcium and magnesium that make water hard, it replaces those ions one for one with sodium. The amount added is proportional to how hard your water is, and in most cases it isn’t a significant contributor to the sodium in your diet.

Yes. Once a softener is installed it begins removing the scale that hard water built up. It takes a long time to clear, but it will clear.

Other than salt or potassium chloride, no. A softener reduces the cleaning supplies and detergents going down your drain, which makes it a net positive environmentally.

Modern softeners recharge based on how much water you use and how hard it is. Most of our customers add salt once or twice a year.

Worth measuring once, with the caveat that the numbers need context. USGS found more than 90 percent of Denver Basin bedrock wells above 300 picocuries per liter, the lower of two thresholds the EPA once proposed, and fewer than 5 percent above the higher 4,000 pCi/L alternative level. The EPA never finalized a radon standard for drinking water. So a high-sounding result may or may not mean anything, which is exactly why you want the number in front of you rather than a sales pitch.

The data says probably not, at least from the geology. USGS found no uranium exceedances in Denver Basin bedrock wells, and uranium and nitrate both decreased with depth. The Denver uranium story in the headlines is the Denver Radium Superfund site, industrial contamination along the South Platte dating to around 1914, and Colorado’s uranium country is on the Western Slope. Colorado’s health department does track uranium in private wells statewide, so it is a reasonable line item on a first-time test panel, just not a local alarm.

More of a South Platte corridor question than a bedrock one. USGS found nitrate above the drinking water standard in more than a quarter of South Platte alluvial samples, while in the Denver Basin bedrock it decreased with depth and was highest in the shallowest wells. If you are near irrigated agriculture or on a shallow well in a septic-dense subdivision, it belongs on your test panel.

Only for quantity. Colorado’s well permit is a water rights instrument, governing how much you may withdraw, and Denver Basin permits are built around a hundred-year aquifer life because the basin is not meaningfully recharged. The state health department says outright that it does not regulate water quality for private wells. No agency tests your water at drilling, at sale, or afterwards.

Colorado’s health department recommends testing every year for coliform bacteria, nitrate, total dissolved solids and pH. A fuller first-time panel usually adds arsenic, hardness, iron, lead, fluoride, copper and uranium. Nothing will remind you, which is the whole problem.

Iron, sulfur and hardness are aesthetic and nuisance problems at the levels we usually find. Safety questions like bacteria, nitrate and the radionuclide panel are separate tests. Start with a water test and we’ll tell you honestly which category your results fall into, including when the answer is that your water is fine.

Most residential systems install in a few hours in a single visit. We deliver the equipment, install it, and set it up, so there’s nothing for you to unbox or assemble.

As soon as the well is drilled and tested. Roughing in space and plumbing for treatment during construction costs far less than retrofitting it into a finished home.

Every recommendation we make starts with knowing what is in your water. The test is free, it happens at your house, and it takes about half an hour. You’ll get your numbers explained in plain language and an honest answer about whether you need treatment at all.