Where Plainfield water comes from
Plainfield buys treated Lake Michigan water through the DuPage Water Commission, and has since April 2004. Lake water is surface water: it goes through a Chicago treatment plant, is chlorinated, and travels a long way in pipe before it reaches Plainfield. The Village lists the hardness at 6.3 grains per gallon. The USGS calls 3.5 to 7 grains “moderately hard” and anything over 10.5 “very hard,” which is where Joliet sits at 12 to 22.
So a Plainfield home does not have the radium problem the deep-well towns have, and the hardness is a third of Joliet's. That is the good news. The rest of this page is honest about what is left.
What 6.3 grains does over time
Moderately hard water does not crust a faucet in a month the way 22 grains does. It does the same thing slowly. Scale still builds on the heating element in the water heater, still spots the dishwasher load, still leaves the shower door cloudy and still means soap does not rinse all the way off skin and hair. Homes that have lived with it for years tend not to notice until they stay somewhere with soft water.
A salt-based softener takes 6.3 grains to effectively zero. Because the water is already moderately hard rather than very hard, the softener regenerates less often and uses less salt than the same unit in Joliet. Read how the softener works.
Chlorine, not chloramine
Because Plainfield is on lake water, the disinfectant at the tap is chlorine. That is what you smell in the shower and taste in a glass from the kitchen sink. Plain chlorine comes out on standard activated carbon, so the whole-home carbon tank in a Plainfield install does not need the catalytic media Joliet's chloramine calls for. Your written quote names the media. Read about whole-house carbon filtration.
Drinking water on a lake system
Chlorinating surface water creates disinfection byproducts, which is the category that shows up on EWG's list for lake-water towns. The water is legal and the Village reports on it every year. An under-sink reverse osmosis unit takes the chlorine, the byproducts and the dissolved solids out of the water you drink and cook with, at a dedicated faucet. People usually notice the change first in coffee and ice. Read about reverse osmosis.
The bundle in a Plainfield home
- Softener at the main line for the 6.3 grains.
- Carbon tank for chlorine at every tap and shower.
- Reverse osmosis under the kitchen sink for drinking and cooking water.
All three installed for $2,999, same price as everywhere else we work. If your priority is only drinking water, tell us in the quote request and we will quote to that instead of pushing the full bundle. See what the price includes.
Wells on the edges of Plainfield
Unincorporated addresses around Plainfield are often on private wells, and none of the lake-water discussion applies to them. Well water in this area is hard, can carry iron and hydrogen sulfide, and can carry radium. Bring a recent test and we size the equipment to it. More on well water treatment in Will County.
Sources: Village of Plainfield Water Service page (source and 6.3 gpg hardness), DuPage Water Commission, USGS hardness scale, EWG Tap Water Database (2013 to 2023 data).