Ankeny does not treat its own water, and that is only half the story. The city also runs two aquifer storage and recovery wells — it pushes treated water underground in the cold months and pulls it back out in summer. So an Ankeny tap in August is not necessarily delivering the same water it delivered in February.
Kind Water Co installs and services water softeners, whole-home carbon filtration, reverse osmosis drinking water systems and well water systems in Ankeny and on the acreages around it. We also repair and service existing softeners.
Installs are done by licensed local plumbing professionals we vet, schedule, and stand behind.
We come to Ankeny. Our free in-home test measures hardness, iron and total dissolved solids right at your kitchen sink. The first 50 miles of travel are free, then $1 a mile, and any travel charge is quoted before you agree to anything.
Your test can lead to a softener, reverse osmosis, both, or nothing at all. If your home does not need a system, we will tell you so and leave you the numbers.
Every price below includes equipment, installation, taxes and a lifetime parts warranty:
Ready when you are: book your free in-home water test or start with an instant quote.
| Ankeny at a glance | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Who supplies the water | City of Ankeny water department, PWSID IA7709053, 76,207 people served (EPA SDWIS). Ankeny is a founding member of Central Iowa Water Works and buys treated water rather than producing it |
| Where it comes from | Purchased surface water, listed as such in both EPA SDWIS and the Iowa DNR source-water tracker, produced at the Des Moines Water Works and CIWW plants — plus recovery from Ankeny's own two ASR wells |
| Softened at the plant | Yes, at the supplier's plant. Ankeny adds no softening step of its own, so hardness is whatever DMWW and CIWW deliver that day |
| Published hardness | None from Ankeny. The City's water page directs residents to Des Moines Water Works for water quality information, and DMWW publishes a target of less than 150 mg/L, or 8.76 grains per gallon |
The 2026 regional water quality report states plainly that “the CITY OF ANKENY operates two ASR wells.” Aquifer storage and recovery is a simple idea with an interesting consequence: treated water is injected into an aquifer when demand is low, sits there, and gets recovered when demand peaks. Water that has spent months underground does not test identically to water that came straight off a plant that morning.
The published numbers show it. Ankeny ASR Wells 4 and 6 tested nitrate at 2.29 mg/L and sodium at 54 mg/L in 2023 and 2024. Fleur Drive finished water, by contrast, reached 9.17 mg/L of nitrate in 2025. That is not a problem with either one — both sit under the 10 mg/L maximum contaminant level — but it is a real, published difference of about seven milligrams per litre depending on where your water spent the last few months.
Which matters if you are shopping for a drinking-water system on the strength of a number you read once. The honest position in Ankeny is that a single reading describes a moment, not a year. Our explainer on nitrate in Iowa water covers the seasonal pattern, and Waukee, which runs one ASR well of its own, tells a similar story.
Buying water does not mean the city is uninvolved. Ankeny's distribution system is sampled on its own, and the 2026 report gives it a good showing: total trihalomethanes at 49 µg/L against an 80 µg/L maximum contaminant level, haloacetic acids at 7 µg/L, and zero positive coliform samples across 70 monthly samples. For a distribution network serving 76,000 people, that is a clean sheet.
Those disinfection byproducts are the number worth watching in any purchased-water city, because they form in the pipes between the plant and your house rather than at the plant itself. At 49 µg/L Ankeny is comfortably in the lower half of the metro — Urbandale is the one to compare against at 70. A carbon stage handles chlorine taste and byproducts either way; our carbon filtration guide explains how it works.
Ankeny is one of many Iowa cities with no published hardness figure, and we are not going to invent one. What we can say is where the water comes from. DMWW aims for under 150 mg/L, about 8.76 grains per gallon, and Waukee — also on purchased DMWW water — publishes an actual measured range of 7.5 to 8.5 grains. Ankeny sits north of Des Moines, which the 2026 report assigns to the Saylorville plant, and Saylorville softens with reverse osmosis and ultrafiltration rather than lime. That could put Ankeny water below the DMWW-wide figure. Nobody publishes the answer, which is exactly why we bring a test kit rather than a brochure.
Ankeny is a newer-build city with a lot of large homes and high simultaneous demand, which changes sizing more than it changes the shopping list. All prices are all-in: equipment, installation, taxes and a lifetime parts warranty.
Annual maintenance is $199 a year on a tank-RO home and $249 a year on a tankless-RO home. A full diagnostic call is $199; a known-issue trip is $99 plus the part. We run 0% financing and take $100 off for military and first responders. Ask for the written breakdown before anything is scheduled, or begin one with our instant quote.
Past the Ankeny distribution boundary, homes in northern Polk County sit on private wells with no plant, no ASR and no annual report behind them. Our well water setup is a dual-tank system at $3,450, or $3,800 with tank RO, with UV disinfection at $700 and sediment pre-filtration at $500 when the readings call for them. On a well we always fit a tank RO rather than a tankless unit — high dissolved solids cost a tankless system its pressure. Start with free well water testing.
Kind Water Co is licensed and insured, and our softeners are built from NSF/ANSI 44 certified components and our reverse osmosis systems are certified to NSF/ANSI 58. Installs are carried out by licensed local plumbing professionals we vet, schedule and stand behind. Our prices are published and all-in, so the number here is the number you sign.
In a city with no published hardness number and water that shifts between winter and peak summer, a reading from your own tap is worth more than any figure we could quote you. We come out, test hardness, iron and total dissolved solids at your kitchen sink, and leave you the numbers and a written quote whether or not you buy anything. Nitrate and bacteria need a certified lab, and we will point you to one. Book your free in-home water test.
Des Moines · Johnston · Altoona · Polk City · Urbandale · Ames · Polk County
Ankeny buys treated water rather than producing it. Both EPA SDWIS and the Iowa DNR source-water tracker list PWSID IA7709053 as purchased surface water, produced at the Des Moines Water Works and Central Iowa Water Works plants. Ankeny is a CIWW founding member and also operates two aquifer storage and recovery wells of its own.
Aquifer storage and recovery wells store treated water underground in cold months and recover it in summer. The 2026 regional report states Ankeny operates two. Ankeny ASR Wells 4 and 6 tested nitrate at 2.29 mg/L and sodium at 54 mg/L in 2023 to 2024, against 9.17 mg/L nitrate at the Fleur Drive plant in 2025.
Ankeny publishes no hardness figure and directs residents to Des Moines Water Works, which states a target of less than 150 mg/L or 8.76 grains per gallon. Ankeny sits north of Des Moines, an area the 2026 report assigns to the Saylorville plant, which softens by reverse osmosis rather than lime. We will not quote a number we cannot source.
No. The 2026 report gives Ankeny total trihalomethanes of 49 µg/L against an 80 µg/L maximum contaminant level, haloacetic acids of 7 µg/L, and zero positive coliform samples in 70 monthly samples. That is among the lower readings in the metro; Urbandale, for comparison, reported 70 µg/L of trihalomethanes.
A Kind Water Co softener is $2,500 all-in and $2,850 paired with reverse osmosis, including equipment, installation, taxes and a lifetime parts warranty. The XL build, often the right call in a larger Ankeny home, is $2,800 or $3,150 with RO. Financing is 0%, with $100 off for military and first responders.
Every number on this page comes from a public record. Here is where to open each one yourself.
Whole-home water softening, filtration, and reverse-osmosis drinking water — professionally installed and built to last a lifetime.
Serving Marion, Cedar Rapids & surrounding Linn County communities
Kind Water Co is a d/b/a of Zero Cap Investments LLC · 2258 Bison St, Apt B, Marion, IA 52302
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