Three numbers to get before you spend anything on treating your water
Hardness, total dissolved solids and the utility's own report tell you what is actually coming out of the tap. Each takes minutes, and together they decide which kind of treatment, if any, the water needs.
If your water comes from a community system, the utility is required to give its customers a Consumer Confidence Report each year, usually delivered or posted by July 1. Most people never read it. It lists the contaminants the system detected, the level found, and the maximum level allowed, with the source of each. Many reports also state hardness and total dissolved solids for the supply.
That report answers the question most home tests cannot: what is in the water at the plant. It will not tell you what happens between the plant and your glass, which is where old plumbing, a softener or a long run of pipe change the answer. So it is the starting point, not the whole picture.
On a private well there is no report. The county or state health department, or a certified laboratory, tests well water for a fee, and that is the right first step before any equipment. A home strip cannot see bacteria, nitrate or metals.
Hardness is the calcium and magnesium dissolved in the water, reported either in milligrams per liter as calcium carbonate or in grains per gallon. The two scales convert at 17.1 mg/L per grain. The U.S. Geological Survey classes water as soft below 60 mg/L, moderately hard from 61 to 120, hard from 121 to 180, and very hard above 180.
Hardness matters twice. It is what scales a kettle and a water heater, and it is a mineral input. In the Trace Elements literature water is classified by its mineral profile the way food is: hard water, high in calcium and magnesium relative to sodium and potassium, classes as sedative; softened water, low in total solids and dominant in sodium, classes as stimulatory. A softener does not remove hardness so much as trade it, calcium and magnesium out and sodium in, roughly in proportion to how hard the water was going in.
Testing it at home takes one of two things. Hardness test strips give a band reading in about a minute and are accurate enough to tell soft from very hard. A titration kit, where you add drops until the color changes and count them, gives a number and costs a little more. Either one is worth doing at more than one tap, for the reason in the section on taps below.
| USGS class | mg/L as CaCO3 | Grains per gallon | What you tend to notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Soft | 0 to 60 | 0 to 3.5 | Soap lathers easily; little scale |
| Moderately hard | 61 to 120 | 3.6 to 7.0 | Some spotting on glassware |
| Hard | 121 to 180 | 7.1 to 10.5 | Scale on fixtures and in the kettle |
| Very hard | over 180 | over 10.5 | Heavy scale; appliances shorten their lives |
A TDS meter is a pocket instrument that reads total dissolved solids in parts per million by measuring how well the water conducts electricity. It is quick, cheap and repeatable, which makes it a good trend instrument: test the same tap monthly and you will see a softener regenerating, a filter exhausting, or a seasonal change in the supply.
What it cannot do is tell you what the solids are. Calcium, sodium, nitrate and a dissolved metal all raise the reading. A low TDS is not a clean bill of health, and a high TDS is not automatically a problem; hard mineral-rich water can read high and be exactly what the label says. Pair it with the hardness test and the report, and the three together become informative in a way none of them is alone.
pH strips add one more piece. Softened and naturally soft water tends to run on the acidic side, and mildly acidic water is a little more aggressive toward the pipe it travels through. That is the link between the tap and old copper or iron plumbing, and it is why the pH of the drinking tap is worth knowing even when the utility's number looks fine.
Houses with a softener rarely soften every line. The outside hose bibs are usually unsoftened, so nobody pays for salt to water the lawn. Some kitchens have a separate cold line that bypasses the unit; many do not, and a refrigerator's water dispenser is often plumbed from the softened side without anyone remembering.
The way to find out is to test rather than trace. Run the hardness strip at the kitchen cold tap, at a bathroom tap and at an outside bib. Softened water reads soft; unsoftened reads whatever the supply is. Ten minutes with three strips answers a question the plumbing diagram usually cannot, and it tells you which tap you are actually drinking from.
Strips and meters do not detect bacteria, lead, arsenic or nitrate. If the Consumer Confidence Report flags any of those, or if the water is from a well that has never been tested, a certified laboratory test comes before any home equipment. Read the numbers on this page as screening for minerals and dissolved solids, not as a safety verdict on the water.
With the three numbers in hand, the equipment question becomes a matching exercise. Ozone is a treatment for microbial and organic load: it is what our Tri-Oxy water ozonators are built for, and how to make ozonated water covers the procedure step by step. Dissolved minerals and metals are a different problem, and ozone does not remove them; what ozonated water is for, and the job it does not do draws that line plainly, and it is worth reading before buying anything from us.
So the report and the tests do two jobs at once. They tell you whether hardness or a softener is the thing to address, which is a plumbing and mineral decision, and they tell you whether the organic and microbial side is where treatment belongs, which is the job ozone is for. Buying equipment before measuring is how people end up treating the wrong problem well.
Read the report, run a hardness strip at three taps, and take a TDS reading. Then decide what the water needs, and only then what to buy for it.
Practitioner Eileen Durfee, NBS (Nutritional Balancing Science), NASM-CPT — wellness educator, inventor, author, and a former nuclear quality engineer.
Twenty years in nuclear power quality engineering taught me one habit I have never dropped: nothing gets specified until it has been measured. You do not order a valve for a pressure you assumed. The water in a house is the same. People buy a filter for a problem they read about and never test for the one they have.
When I began working with hair tissue mineral analysis, household water became one of the first questions I asked, because it is a mineral input a person takes in every day without deciding to. Three numbers, a strip and a report settle it in an afternoon. Our Facebook group is free to join if you want to ask questions.
With hardness test strips, which give a band reading in about a minute, or a titration kit, which gives a number by counting drops to a color change. Test more than one tap, because a softener usually serves only part of the house.
Total dissolved solids, in parts per million, by conductivity. It counts everything dissolved and identifies nothing, so use it as a trend reading on the same tap over time rather than as a verdict on the water.
Community water systems must give customers a Consumer Confidence Report each year, usually by July 1. It arrives with a bill, is posted on the utility's website, or is available on request. It lists what was detected and the allowed limit for each item.
No. Ozone acts on microbial and organic load. Dissolved calcium, magnesium and metals are a separate problem that needs separate treatment, which is why the measurements come first.
Published September 2026 • Updated September 12, 2026
By Eileen Durfee, NBS (Nutritional Balancing Science), NASM-CPT, former nuclear quality engineer and inventor of the Tri-Oxy water treatment line.
More from Eileen Durfee
Eileen's free guides, including the Healthy Home Detox Checklist, on EileenDurfee.com
This article is for educational purposes only. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Nuco Enterprise Solutions LLC.
