Frequently Asked Questions

National cost guides put a professionally installed whole-house softener somewhere between roughly $1,000 and $4,000, with higher-capacity or dual-tank units running above that. Those are national figures, not our prices. What a specific home costs depends on hardness in grains per gallon, iron, the number of people and bathrooms, whether a sediment or carbon prefilter belongs ahead of it, and how much plumbing the install takes in your basement. Tell us what you have or what you want, and you get a free estimate before any work is done. If you do not know your hardness, we can test it in your home for free. If the honest answer is that a smaller unit will do the job, that is the one on the estimate.

Almost certainly yes. Iowa American Water does not soften the Mississippi River water it delivers to Davenport, Bettendorf and the surrounding communities (its own published range is 136 to 350 mg/L, or 7.9 to 20.4 grains per gallon), and it swings with the river through the year. Anything above about 7 grains is considered hard, and the top of that range is very hard. That is the white crust on faucets, the film on the shower door and the water heater that scales up early. It is the same story elsewhere: Clinton's deep wells run around 15 grains and DeWitt's city wells around 13, neither softened. A free in-home test tells you exactly where your tap sits.

Yes. Free water testing and consultation is one of our core services, not a sales gimmick. We come to your home and test hardness, iron, total dissolved solids, pH and chlorine on the spot, then walk you through what each number means for your fixtures, appliances and drinking water. There is no charge and no obligation to buy anything afterward. The test is also optional: if you already know the system you want, you do not need one to get a quote. When a private well needs more than the in-home kit can see (bacteria, nitrate, radium, arsenic), we send a sample to a lab and go over the results with you when they come back. Iowa's county health departments in Clinton, Scott and Jackson counties also offer free bacteria and nitrate kits for private wells, and we are happy to read those results alongside our own. Estimates are free too.

Scheduled work (water tests, installs, repairs, salt delivery and filter changes) is booked Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm. You can call (563) 221-9009 or use the free estimate form, and we will set a time during those hours. Genuine emergencies are different. If a softener is flooding the basement, stuck running or leaking, an RO fitting has let go under the sink, or the house has no usable water, we keep a 24/7 phone line and are on-site within 2 hours. Those two facts are the only speed promises we make. A slow RO faucet, an orange toilet ring or a change in taste is not an emergency, and the fix is scheduled during business hours.

Yes. Midwest Water Solutions is insured, and we recommend asking that of anyone who is going to cut into your main water line, tie a drain into your plumbing and wire a control valve in your basement. Carson brings five years of hands-on water-conditioning experience and a conservation degree to the work, and the company carries the insurance that covers the people doing it. We serve residential and commercial customers across Clinton, Jackson and Scott counties in Iowa and the Illinois side of the Quad Cities. If you would like to see the paperwork before we start, ask. We would rather you check than wonder.

They solve different problems, and many homes end up with both. A water softener treats every tap in the house: it removes the calcium and magnesium that cause scale, spots, dry skin and early appliance failure, and it is the fix for hard water. Reverse osmosis usually treats one tap, the kitchen sink, or every tap when it is installed as a whole-home system in the basement, and takes out dissolved solids the softener leaves behind: nitrates, lead, radium, sodium and PFAS, plus the taste that has you buying bottled water. If your complaint is crust on the faucets and a scaled water heater, start with a softener. If it is the taste of the drinking water or something a well test found, start with RO. If you are not sure, a free in-home test sorts out which, and whether one system or two is worth the money.

Yes, we repair and service all brands of water softeners, reverse osmosis systems and filter systems, whether we installed them or not. That includes the Culligan or Kinetico unit that came with the house, a Whirlpool or GE softener from a big-box store, EcoWater and Morton units, and softeners built on Fleck or Clack control valves. Common calls are a softener that is not softening, one that keeps running or will not stop regenerating, a leak at the valve or brine tank, a salt bridge, a resin bed fouled by iron, and an RO faucet that has slowed to a trickle. We diagnose first and tell you honestly whether a repair makes sense or the unit has reached the end of its life. We are not tied to any one manufacturer, so the answer is not slanted toward selling you a new system.

You tell us roughly how much salt your softener goes through and we put your address on a delivery schedule. On each visit we carry the bags in, fill the brine tank to the right level, and check for a salt bridge, the hard crust that forms over a hollow in the tank and makes a softener stop working while the tank still looks full. Deliveries are scheduled Monday through Friday during business hours. Delivery is popular with rural customers on gravel roads, older homeowners who should not be carrying 40-pound bags down basement stairs, and anyone who is tired of the softener quietly running out. If you are not sure how much salt your unit should be using, we can figure that out on the first stop.

Orange or rust-colored rings in the toilet, streaks in the tub and yellowed laundry are the signature of iron in the water, often with manganese alongside it, and in this area they almost always come from a private well in the Silurian dolomite. A Silurian well at Grand Mound, outside DeWitt, tested 1.7 mg/L iron; it takes a small fraction of that to stain. A softener can catch a little dissolved iron, but it fouls the resin bed and is not the right tool. The fix is an air-injection iron filter installed ahead of the softener: it oxidizes the iron and manganese, traps them in the media, and backwashes them down the drain on a schedule. We size it to your iron level in ppm and your household's flow. If you do not have a recent iron number, the free in-home test gets one.

Rotten-egg odor is hydrogen sulfide gas, and where it shows up tells you the cause. If only the hot water smells, the reaction is usually happening inside your water heater, where the anode rod reacts with sulfate-reducing bacteria: a much smaller fix than treating the whole house. If both hot and cold smell, the gas is coming in with the well water itself, often along with iron and the slime of iron or sulfur bacteria in the toilet tank. For a well, an ozone system is the chemical-free fix: ozone oxidizes the sulfur and iron in a contact tank and a filter strips them out. This is not an emergency, so the work is scheduled during business hours, Monday through Friday. If you are not sure which case you have, the free in-home test confirms the source.

If you are on a shallow well in farm country, it is worth testing every year. Nitrate comes from fertilizer, manure and septic systems, and shallow or poorly cased wells across Clinton, Jackson and Scott counties can pick it up, especially after wet springs. The federal limit is 10 mg/L, and it matters most for infants, pregnant women and anyone with certain health conditions, because nitrate has no taste, color or smell to warn you. Iowa's county health departments offer free nitrate and bacteria kits for private wells, and our free in-home consultation includes reading those results. If nitrate is over the limit, the fix is an under-sink reverse osmosis system, which removes it at the kitchen tap, or a whole-home RO system if you want it out of every tap. A softener or carbon filter does not remove nitrate.

First, put it in bypass. Every softener has a bypass valve on the head or the plumbing behind it; turning it sends untreated water to the house and stops water from flowing through the unit. If you cannot find it or the leak is at the supply side, shut the main water valve. Then call (563) 221-9009. A softener flooding a basement or stuck in regeneration is exactly what our 24/7 phone line is for, and we are on-site within 2 hours for genuine emergencies like this. Once the water is stopped, the usual causes are a failed seal or piston in the control valve, a stuck injector, a float that is not shutting the brine tank off, or a cracked fitting (all repairable on any brand). We will tell you honestly whether the unit is worth fixing.