The North Idaho Water Assessment

A certified laboratory panel on your well. Credited in full toward your system. The report is yours either way.

What you actually get

A certified independent laboratory tests your water. Not us, a lab, with an accreditation, that has no idea what we might quote you and no stake in the answer.

The panel covers what matters on a well in this region:

• Metals and minerals, arsenic, uranium, iron, manganese, lead, copper
• Hardness, pH, total dissolved solids, alkalinity
• Nitrate and nitrite
• Bacteria, total coliform and E. coli
• Sulfide / sulfur, where the sample or your description calls for it

PFAS testing is available as a named addition. It's a separate certified method with its own cost, and whether your location argues for it is something we'll tell you straight on the consult, parts of the corridor have documented detections; much of it has none. If you want it regardless of location, you can add it. Either way, your report only ever shows what was actually tested.

You get the lab's report, in your name, on their letterhead. Not a summary we typed up. The document.

Why it's paid, and not free

Free water tests exist everywhere in this industry. There are two kinds.

The first is a strip or a drop kit you do yourself. It reads hardness, maybe iron, maybe pH. Useful for what it measures. It cannot detect arsenic, uranium, nitrate, bacteria, or PFAS, the entire category of things on a well that have no taste, no smell, and no color.

The second is the free test a salesperson runs on your counter. Same limits, plus one more: the person reading it is the person selling you the fix.

We priced this the way it costs. A certified lab panel with this scope, collected properly and shipped under chain of custody, costs what it costs. Charging you for it is the only version where the number in front of you is a number and not a sales tool.

And it comes back to you. If you buy a system, the fee comes off the price, all of it, not a portion. If you don't buy a system, you've paid for a certified analysis of your own drinking water that most well owners in this county have never had, and it's yours to keep.

We'll give you the exact figure on the consult, before you commit to anything and before a kit ships. There's no charge to have that conversation.

Chain of custody, and why it's on this page

Chain of custody is the documented record of who handled your sample and when, from collection to the lab bench. It's the difference between a number and a defensible number.

It matters in three places:

• Real estate. A lab report with intact chain of custody is a document a buyer, a lender, or an underwriter will accept. A countertop reading is not.
• Re-testing. Thirty days after installation we test again. That comparison only means something if both samples were collected the same way.
• You. If you ever need to show someone what was in your water, a neighbor, a county program, an attorney, you want the version with the paperwork.

How it runs

1. Free consult first. Twenty to thirty minutes on the phone. We ask about your well, your house, and what made you look into this. You ask whatever you want. Nothing is sold on this call.

2. If the assessment makes sense, you pay for it, we'll have given you the exact figure on the call, and we send a collection kit with instructions, bottles, preservatives where the analyte needs them, and a return label. Some analytes have to be collected a specific way or the result is meaningless, so the instructions are worth two minutes of your time.

3. You collect and ship it. Most people do it in ten minutes on a Saturday morning.

4. The lab sends the results back. We tell you the turnaround when we ship your kit, and we book a second call to read them.

5. We go through it together, line by line, your number, the standard, and what it means for a system. Then one recommendation, based on what the report says.

What we do with the number

One recommendation. The build your lab report calls for.

Not a good/better/best menu designed so you land in the middle. Not a package we hoped you'd take before we saw your water. If the report says you need iron removal, softening, and a drinking-water stage, that's the recommendation. If it says you need softening and nothing else, that's the recommendation, and it costs less.

We don't build below what the report calls for. That's not a sales position, it's what makes the 30-day re-test possible. We can only put your target numbers in writing if we build the thing that hits them.

Two results we handle differently, and you should know that up front

If bacteria comes back present, E. coli in particular, that is not a system conversation that day. That's a boil-or-bottled conversation, a look at your wellhead, and usually a call to a driller. We'll tell you that first, before anything else, and we'll say it even though it's the version where nobody buys anything.

If nitrate comes back above the standard and there's an infant or a pregnancy in the house, bottled water, starting immediately, before any system discussion. Same reason.

We put this on a public page on purpose. It's the part of this business where the honest answer and the profitable answer are different, and you should know which one you're going to get before you pay anyone anything.