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Serving Mobile + Baldwin County, AL
Free in-home water test · results while we're there
Serving Mobile + Baldwin County, AL
Free in-home water test · results while we're there
Free tool
An orange fan down white siding. Crust you can feel on the aerator. A turquoise run under the spigot. Most people read these as paint problems and call a painter — and sometimes that is right. Answer two questions and this decoder tells you which it is.
Here is the sequence that costs people money. A rust fan appears on the siding, a painter washes it off and repaints that elevation, and eighteen months later the fan is back — because the irrigation water that drew it is still carrying iron. Good paint job, wrong half of the problem. Nobody said the word “iron” out loud.
We treat water. We do not paint, and we are not going to quote you on a finish. So we built this decoder with Pro 1 Painters (opens pro1painters.com in a new tab), a painting contractor here in Spanish Fort. They wrote the surface half, we wrote the chemistry, and every verdict carries both — stop the source and get the finish back.
And it says so when the answer is neither. Of the 9 findings, 5 have nothing to do with your supply water: efflorescence is rain moving through masonry, mildew is airborne, a blistered bathroom wall is a leak or a fan that does not vent, peeling slab paint is groundwater underneath it, and chalky faded siding is sunlight. Only 4 point at something we can treat. A tool that found a water cause every time would be an advertisement, and you would know it by the third answer.
Answer both and the verdict appears here — including the five findings where the honest answer is that your water is not doing it.
The decoder narrows to one. Here is the whole set if you would rather read than click — including the 5 that are not about your water at all.
The tell: The stain has a direction — it fans, streaks or arcs — and the worst of it sits inside the throw of a sprinkler head.
Stop the source: Well water treatment
Get the finish back: Pressure washing on pro1painters.com (opens in a new tab)
The tell: A cloudy film or scattered hard spots that shrug off a rinse, stopping in a clean line exactly where the spray stopped.
Stop the source: Water softener installation
Get the finish back: Pressure washing on pro1painters.com (opens in a new tab)
The tell: Blue-green or turquoise, always starting below something metal — a tap, a spigot, a fitting.
Stop the source: Acid neutralising and pH correction
Get the finish back: Drywall repair and painting on pro1painters.com (opens in a new tab)
The tell: Dark gray or brown marking around fixtures and drains, plus a rotten-egg smell that is worse on the hot side.
Stop the source: Whole-house carbon filtration
Get the finish back: nothing to paint
The tell: The white is pushing OUT of the brick or stucco rather than sitting on it, and it returns in the same patch after rain.
Stop the source: not a water treatment problem
Get the finish back: Stucco and masonry painting on pro1painters.com (opens in a new tab)
The tell: It follows shade, not plumbing. North elevations, under the roof edge, behind a shrub, the damp corner of a bathroom.
Stop the source: not a water treatment problem
Get the finish back: Pressure washing on pro1painters.com (opens in a new tab)
The tell: A brown ring with a hard edge on a ceiling, or paint blistering off a bathroom or laundry wall.
Stop the source: find the leak first
Get the finish back: Drywall repair and painting on pro1painters.com (opens in a new tab)
The tell: Paint lifting off a slab in sheets or coin-sized discs, with a damp patch under the piece that came away.
Stop the source: not a water treatment problem
Get the finish back: Floor painting on pro1painters.com (opens in a new tab)
The tell: Colour rubs off on your palm and the whole elevation has gone flat, rather than being stained in patches.
Stop the source: not a water treatment problem
Get the finish back: Exterior painting on pro1painters.com (opens in a new tab)
Water Filtration 1 will not specify equipment off a photograph. The free in-home visit reads hardness, chlorine and TDS and includes a soap test; where a finding turns on iron or pH, we will tell you straight that those need their own reading before anyone sizes a system — including us.
Your ZIP, your water source, and what you are looking at. We will tell you whether it is ours to fix.
If the decoder pointed at iron, hardness, low pH or sulfide, these are the pages that explain what actually gets installed. If it pointed at paint, the links inside the verdict go straight to the service that repairs it.
Landed here but the mark is clearly on the paint? The same decoder from the painting side(opens pro1painters.com in a new tab) runs the same nine findings and leads with the surface repair instead.