This article is an overview of Tap Score’s Home Water Treatment Matching Feature. Within Tap Score’s Water Quality Report, customers receive an unbiased and contaminant-matched list of recommended water treatment products that are selected specifically to treat the contaminants found in your water sample.

SimpleLab is 100% impartial in our product recommendations. We have no sales agreement with any water treatment company. Our goal is to provide you with the most informative and comprehensive water testing and support service we can.

Overview

You just want to be sure your water is safe yet it feels like everyone out there is trying to sell you their water treatment product. In fact, most "free water tests" you come across are just a ruse to get a salesperson from the treatment company inside your home. Worst of all, the "testing" that they do is using the same inadequate test strips you can buy yourself.

During the course of helping so many folks pick the right treatment, we've noticed 6 common stumbling blocks that you might face along the way:

• You don’t know what’s actually in your water that needs treatment
• All the treatment companies promise you the world
• The technologies are poorly explained
• You wonder about the installation process.
• You fear the maintenance cost and hassle
• You doubt whether the product is actually working

Tap Score Treatment Matching is the first service of its kind.

We created Tap Score with the purpose of not only informing you about the health effects of what's in your water, but also providing a clear path to improving its quality. Tap Score Treatment Matching exists so you can have the confidence that you're correctly treating what's in your water and not overspending to do so.

How It Works

When you purchase Tap Score, you are getting 100% independent testing and all the details about everything detected in your sample: potential health effects, common contaminant sources, and possible reasons for your water’s funky taste, odor or smell.

With all of this, we have what we need to match your water with a list of ideal treatment solutions.

Where do the products we pick come from?

We've built a richly detailed and ever-growing water treatment product library that is the result of thousands of hours spent assessing these products by a professional team of water scientists, treatment experts, customer service specialists and software engineers.

The criteria for listing products in our library include:

• Treatment products made by reputable manufacturers
• Consumer-tested with sufficient time on the market and high rankings
• Abiding the strongest industrial specifications
• Earning the highest water quality certifications like National Sanitation Foundation certifications or Water Quality Association certifications
• Publicly releasing detailed and complete product testing and treatment specifications

We do not take payments or other incentives from manufacturers to list their products in Tap Score.

Matching Your Contaminants

When your Tap Score Report matches your sample's contaminant profile to a list of a treatment product, it is taking into account a number of criteria that include:

• Certifications for treatment efficacy (NSF / WQA)
• Manufacturer claims for treatment efficacy
• Certifications for materials in contact with your water
• Technologies utilized by the product
• Our assessment of treatment potential based on those technologies
• Maximum contaminant concentration limitations
• Purchase and maintenance costs
• Replacement parts, their service cycles, and their replacement costs
• Product features like capacity, flow rate, maintenance indicators
• Consumer reviews from a variety of reputable sources
• Our own review of our experience using the product
• Installation difficulty (tools required, plumbing modifications, etc.)

However, even after evaluating these factors, it’s still not obvious which products are best for you. There are other matters to consider:

• Not everything found in your water poses a similar health risk
• Not all products choose to obtain treatment certifications (getting certified is expensive).
• Aesthetic factors like water hardness can impact the efficacy, cost and longevity of a treatment system otherwise certified for the most dangerous contaminants.

Tap Score prioritizes your treatment recommendations by taking into account all the above factors and weighing the importance of some factors above others. Your report will display several options, so you can decide what level of coverage, and what level of convenience you want to spend on.

But I have more questions!

Even if you have an especially tricky treatment situation, you have the option of connecting with one of our treatment professionals to discuss your specific situation and address your concerns.

A Special Note on Hardness

The latest feature of our product matching engine is the Softener Recommendation section. Water hardness has long been considered only a nuisance, but in recent years, health researchers have been investigating the role of water hardness in cardiovascular health, dermatology, neurology and more. You can read a thorough summary of this here.

First, we calculate the total grains per gallon in your sample based on Iron, Calcium, Magnesium, and Manganese readings.

Then, we determine whether your water is:

• Generally a little hard (weak recommendation)
• Generally very hard (strong recommendation)
• Contains a critically high amount of one of the specific contaminants that constitutes hardness or otherwise requires a point-of-entry water softener to protect your pipes and any other treatment you have installed.

The appropriate informational message is then presented you along with a calculator that lets you check how your water's hardness combined with your household size affects your requirements for the capacity of the water-softener you would need to install.

Coming Soon to Tap Score

Harmful Compounds In Your Shower and Bath Water?

You may want to know how best to avoid breathing in chlorine and volatile organic compounds in the shower, or otherwise absorbing them through your skin). We'll very soon be including shower filter options.

Concerned About Reverse Osmosis Removing Too Much?

Some customers have expressed concern about Reverse Osmosis treatment removing important minerals from their water. While most people get much more of these minerals through the food they eat than the water they drink, we'll very soon be distinguishing RO systems that include a remineralization stage as a feature or option.

Is it a "Do It Yourself" job?

Other customers would like to limit the products they see by those they can install themselves, or those that don't require modification to plumbing (for renters). Coming Soon, along with more information about the installation requirements for each product!