Real Estate Pre-Purchase Water Testing

A well property changes hands on questions a city closing never asks: what is actually in the water, and does the equipment on it work? Two different tests answer those, and confusing them costs people closings.

If the purchase is financed by FHA or VA, the water test is not something you or the seller can arrange informally. VA's rule is explicit: the sample must be collected AND transported by a disinterested third party — the local health authority, a commercial testing laboratory, or a licensed sanitary engineer — and at no point may the buyer, the seller, or any other interested party handle it. The lab reports to the lender, not to you. VA treats the result as valid for 90 days. Where the local health authority has no standard of its own, the state's applies, and failing that the EPA's.

So our free in-home test cannot be your FHA or VA test, and any company that tells you otherwise is either mistaken or hoping you are. A business that would sell you treatment is the textbook interested party. Call your county health department or a state-certified laboratory for the official one.

What ours is genuinely good for is the part that happens before and after. Before: knowing what the water is doing while you still have room to negotiate, rather than discovering hardness or acidity after the movers leave and it is your repipe bill instead of your negotiating point. After: if the official panel comes back with something treatable — nitrate, hardness, low pH, taste and odour — sizing the equipment that fixes it. Bacteria is a different matter and belongs with the health authority or a well contractor, not with us.

Baldwin County leads Alabama in growth and much of that growth sits on private wells, so this comes up constantly here. We schedule around closing timelines and report in plain numbers.