What a water test does and does not tell you

The tests we run

Bacteriological, pH, conductivity, turbidity, iron and fluoride. The first determines whether the water is safe to drink today. The others determine whether people will still be drinking it in a year.

Why taste matters as much as safety

Water that is microbiologically safe but tastes of iron gets abandoned for the stream, and a borehole nobody uses has failed whatever the laboratory certificate says. Iron above roughly 0.3 mg/l is the usual culprit, and it is a design question — not a health one.

The second test is the real one

Contamination almost never arrives with the water. It arrives afterwards, through a cracked apron, a damaged seal or an unprotected head, weeks or months after everyone has gone home. Retesting at the maintenance visit is what turns a one-day result into an ongoing statement.

What we publish

Certificates are attached to the water point in the public register, with the date they were taken. A certificate without a date is decoration.