The Oak Lawn pipeline
The Village of New Lenox buys Lake Michigan water from the City of Chicago. It arrives through the Southwest Water Transmission System, which the Village of Oak Lawn runs and which also feeds Mokena, Tinley Park, Orland Park, Oak Forest and other south suburbs. New Lenox keeps its old village wells as an emergency backup and nothing more. On a normal day, every drop at your tap started in the lake.
Moderately hard is still hard
Lake Michigan water in this region runs around 6 to 8 grains per gallon. Plainfield, on the same lake source through a different pipeline, lists 6.3. On the USGS scale that is the top of moderately hard or the bottom of hard, against Joliet at 12 to 22. New Lenox is plainly the easier house to treat. Nobody should call it soft.
At 6 to 8 grains a water heater still scales, just over years instead of months. Glasses still spot. Skin and hair still carry a soap film. A salt-based softener at the main line takes it to effectively zero, and because the incoming water is only moderately hard the unit regenerates less often and goes through less salt than the same softener in Joliet. Read how the softener works.
Chlorine at the end of a long pipe
Chicago disinfects lake water with chlorine, and utilities keep a residual in the pipe all the way to the last house so nothing grows on the trip. New Lenox is near the end of that trip, so a noticeable residual is by design. It is the pool smell when the hot water runs and the flat, chemical edge in a glass from the tap. A whole-home carbon tank on standard activated carbon strips it at the main line before it reaches any fixture. Plain chlorine is the easy case; the catalytic media Joliet needs for chloramine is not required here. Read about whole-house carbon filtration.
Drinking water: byproducts, not radium
The trade-off with chlorinating surface water is disinfection byproducts, which is where a lake-water town picks up its EWG entries. The Village reports on them annually and the water is legal. A reverse osmosis unit in the sink cabinet, with its own small faucet, pulls the chlorine, the byproducts and the dissolved solids out of whatever you drink, brew or cook with. In a New Lenox house that is the upgrade people feel first. Read about reverse osmosis.
Which of the three you need
On deep well water we install all three parts because all three problems are there. On New Lenox lake water the honest answer is that it depends on what you want:
- Spots, film, dry skin, scaled heater: the softener.
- Chlorine smell in the shower: the carbon tank.
- Better tasting water, coffee and ice: the RO.
Most homes want all three and the bundle is $2,999 installed. If you only want one or two, say so in the quote request and we quote that. See what the price includes.
Sources: Village of New Lenox Water and Sewer page (Lake Michigan source, Oak Lawn system, emergency wells); Village of Oak Lawn water system reporting (member communities); Village of Plainfield hardness figure; La Grange Park utility FAQ (Lake Michigan hardness); USGS hardness scale.