Water Softeners & Filtration in Adel, Iowa

Adel makes its own water, and since 2022 it has softened that water with reverse osmosis. EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Information System lists reverse osmosis under the softening objective at the city’s current treatment plant, and it marks the plant before it, an ion-exchange softening plant, inactive as of 4 January 2022. That puts Adel in different company from its neighbors. Next door, Waukee buys its water from the regional Des Moines Water Works and Central Iowa Water Works supply, and the West Des Moines plants soften with lime. Adel pumps its own wells and pushes the water through membranes.

What the wells hold before the plant gets to it

Every hardness result the Iowa DNR has on file for Adel was drawn from a single well before treatment. Well #6 read 440 mg/L on 17 June 2019. Well #7 read 360 mg/L on 17 July 2019. Well #8 read 350 mg/L on 27 March 2024. Divide by 17.1 to get grains per gallon and those come to about 25.7, 21.1 and 20.5 grains. The USGS calls anything over 180 mg/L very hard, so each of Adel’s sampled wells starts at roughly double that line.

Well #8 is the newest. SDWIS names it Well #8 (2024), and the state tracker lists it as an active alluvial well 43 feet deep. So the most recent sample on record comes from the newest well and still lands at about 20 grains. Three wells, sampled five years apart, all fall between 20 and 26 grains.

That raw number is not what comes out of your tap, though. The whole job of the plant is to take hardness out. What nobody can tell you is how much stays in, because Adel doesn’t publish a finished hardness figure and the state portal holds none. We won’t guess, and we won’t hand you the Des Moines figure either, because none of Adel’s water goes through a Des Moines plant.

Membranes instead of salt, and what that does to sodium

The plant Adel retired softened by ion exchange. That process trades calcium and magnesium for sodium, so a town that softens that way usually shows it in the sodium column. Dallas Center, also in Dallas County, still softens by ion exchange, and its treated water recorded 144 to 235 mg/L of sodium across four samples from July 2024 to August 2026.

Reverse osmosis works differently. Water is pushed through a membrane that holds back most dissolved minerals, hardness and sodium together. Adel’s treated water from wells 2 through 8 measured 18.6 mg/L of sodium on 30 July 2025. After the membranes, the plant raises the pH with caustic soda and adds orthophosphate, which SDWIS files under corrosion control. Sodium has no federal limit. It’s simply a number some households like to know, and Adel’s is modest.

SDWIS also shows Adel once had a connection bringing in water from Xenia Rural Water. That connection ended on 12 February 2025, so the city system now runs on its own wells and plant.

If your softener was set up before 2022

Plenty of Adel houses already have a softener, put in when the old ion-exchange plant was running or inherited with the house. The city’s treatment changed in 2022. A home softener regenerates on a hardness setting somebody dialed in at install. If nobody has looked at it since, it may be regenerating more often than today’s water needs, using salt and water it doesn’t have to. It may also be set just right. There’s no way to know from the outside.

The fix is a reading at your own sink, which is what our free test gives you. Compare it with the number on your softener’s control valve. If you’re in a newer home and choosing water equipment for the first time, the same reading decides whether you want a softener, reverse osmosis at the kitchen tap, or both. Our signs you need a water softener guide is a good way to judge what you’re seeing in the meantime.

What we install in Adel homes

The right system in Adel depends on the number at your tap, which is why we test first. Every price is all-in: equipment, installation, taxes and a lifetime parts warranty.

• Reverse osmosis on its own — $800 tank, $900 tankless. Drinking and cooking water at the kitchen tap, certified to NSF/ANSI 58. See how RO drinking water works.
• Water softener — $2,500. Built from NSF/ANSI 44 certified components and sized from your test result, not from the raw-well numbers. See how our softeners work.
• Softener plus reverse osmosis — $2,850. Soft water through the house and RO water at the kitchen sink.
• XL softener — $2,800, or $3,150 with RO. For larger homes and higher simultaneous demand.
• Salt-free conditioner — $3,050. A no-salt option for city water.

Maintenance is $199 a year for a tank-RO home and $249 for a tankless-RO home. A diagnostic service call is $199, or $99 for a known-issue trip plus the part. Financing is 0%, and military and first responders take $100 off. Travel is free for the first 50 miles, then $1 a mile, and we quote it before we come. Start with our instant quote, or ask for a written one.

Acreages around Adel and the Raccoon River valley

Outside city limits, Dallas County homes are on a private well or on rural water. If yours comes from Xenia Rural Water, every active Xenia system in the federal record lime-softens its water or buys lime-softened water. Xenia publishes no finished hardness figure, so a test is still how you get one.

A private well gets no treatment at all before your pressure tank. Our well water setup is a dual-tank system at $3,450, or $3,800 with tank RO, with UV at $700 and sediment pre-filtration at $500 as add-ons. We fit tank RO rather than tankless on a well, because high dissolved solids cost a tankless unit its pressure. Iron and sulfur treatment is quoted after your free water test. For bacteria and nitrate, start with a county lab test, often free through Iowa’s Private Well Grants program. Our free well water testing guide covers how.

Why Adel homeowners call us

Kind Water Co is licensed and insured. Our softeners are built from NSF/ANSI 44 certified components and our reverse osmosis systems are certified to NSF/ANSI 58. Installation is by licensed local plumbing professionals we vet, schedule, and stand behind. Our pricing is published and all-in, and where a town publishes no finished number, we would rather measure yours than borrow a neighbor’s.

Get your free Adel water test

Adel’s plant softens, but nobody publishes what it softens to. We come to you, measure hardness, iron and total dissolved solids at your kitchen sink, and leave you the readings and a written quote at no charge. Our free in-home screening measures hardness, iron and total dissolved solids (TDS). It doesn’t test for bacteria, nitrate, arsenic, lead, PFAS or radium; those need a certified laboratory, and we’ll point you to one. Book your free in-home water test, or get numbers now from our instant quote.

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