[micsager]

Have you considered catching rainwater?  A 50 gallon system would be cheap and easy.

Where I live rainwater catchment is the only real option for household water (it would cost $50,000+ to have a well drilled at my house).  There is no municipal water service available.  There are about 65,000 of us on Hawaii Island who depend on rainwater catchment for our household water.  A high-end catchment system (with a 10,000 gal cistern) costs less than $10,000.

Rainwater is essentially distilled water. My water has an electroconductivity of around 10 micromhos.  I run it through a 15gpm whole-house treatment system - a 30 micron filter, a 5 micron filter, a 1 micron/activated carbon filter and an ultraviolet disinfection system.  All of that to insure the water has no pathogens.  Anything that falls on my house roof (the catchment surface) gets washed into the cistern.  The treatment system costs about $750 new.  Replace flters every other month - UV light bulb once a year. 

It is really nice knowing that any tap in the house can be used to draw disinfected rainwater.  I start with rainwater and add minerals to match the style of what I am brewing.  I have a lab, so minerals and analysis are easy for me.  A big plus is that rising brewing equpiment is worry free.

I saw recently where a homebrew supplier had pre-packaged mineral salts for RO water that make up 5 gallons of water from the home city of the beer style you are making. They had several citys available.  I think it was More Flavor, but I'm not sure.

Actually, I use such to water my herbs.  hmmmmm.,. 

[punatic]

...mine is less than 100 on the other side of the Dungeness River.  I did build the place, so I had to get the well dug and approved.  Fairly high in nitrates, that's why the neighbor got the R/O.

High in nitrates is not good.  Is there livestock nearby?

[hopfenundmalz]

That's because you live 3 hours north of me, sitting on top of the same stupid geological formation.

And on top of that are large deposits of ground up rock from the last glacial period.  Milford is surrounded by gravel pits, and the 114 ft deep town wells are in that gravel.  The sand in the area used to be sandstone, and of course the binder in sandstone is calcium carbonate.  Lots of iron in the water here too, as that came along from the ride from Up North.

One town to the east, and the water would come from Lake Huron, and be much better.

[micsager]

...mine is less than 100 on the other side of the Dungeness River.  I did build the place, so I had to get the well dug and approved.  Fairly high in nitrates, that's why the neighbor got the R/O.

High in nitrates is not good.  Is there livestock nearby?

Yea, just barely under what the county would approve without a very expensive filtration system.   Ten years ago, my yard was a cow field.  There's an old huge fencepost, cemented in, and someone wrote in the cement "Please god, keep my bison in"

[punatic]

High nitrates could indicate there may be other problems too.  Have you had it tested for waterborne pathogens?

[micsager]

High nitrates could indicate there may be other problems too.  Have you had it tested for waterborne pathogens?

I've been drinking it every day for 5 years.  Is that a test?   LOL.

[punatic]

How many heads do you have?

[micsager]

How many heads do you have?

2

[morticaixavier]

How many heads do you have?

2

sounds alright then

[Tim McManus]

You might want to have your water tested. That would give you a good starting point. Many universities will do the testing for very little. If you do not know what your water baseline is, you will just be guessing by adding anything. Hope this helps...

Gary

Or you can get it tested at www.wardlab.com.  Test W-6 for $16.50 will give you all the info you need.

+1

I just did this.  I sent them a water sample in a Poland Spring bottle (16 oz.) on a Thursday from here in NJ.  I got the test results emailed to me on Tuesday.  I then spent the next 24 hours reading everything I could about water chemistry, playing with Palmer's Excel spreadsheet, and messing around with BeerSmith's water chemistry calculations.  It really explained a lot about why my beers taste the way they do.  Total eye-opener and well worth the $16.50 I spent for the test.