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Want to Know Exactly What's In Your Water? Get it Tested by a Certified Drinking Water Testing Lab!

8738472965_c33baf85f4_mEvery home’s water is different. That’s why we here at McBride’s Water Advantage believe that the best way to know whether or not your home could benefit from a water treatment system is to have your water tested. By testing your water, we can determine what specific problems your water faces and provide you with individualized recommendations on the best treatment options for your home. The most thorough type of drinking water testing is one that is performed by a certified laboratory. Today we’re going to talk about what a drinking water testing lab does, how it differs from field testing and the details behind McBride’s two different testing services!

What does a certified drinking water testing lab do?

A certified water testing lab is a laboratory that uses testing methods that have been approved by the state of New Hampshire. These laboratories perform the best-possible testing of your home’s water, and their methods are analyzed annually and are subject to periodic on-site audits to ensure everything is done correctly.
The technicians at a certified water testing lab are trained to measure the precise concentrations of many different contaminants in your water. These tests use advanced equipment and techniques that make their testing methods much more thorough than at-home field tests. A typical test from a certified laboratory will measure concentrations of contaminants like:

How does a water testing lab differ from field testing?

Field or “on-site” testing is done at your home instead of at a laboratory. This type of testing is very good at testing for aesthetic problems in your water such as iron, hardness and pH levels. However, field testing is much more limited than laboratory testing.
The biggest difference between field testing and laboratory testing, besides the fact that laboratory testing detects many more types of contaminants, is that most of the contaminants that affect your health can only be tested by a laboratory. Field testing is primarily done to measure for contaminants that affect the look, taste and smell of your water. Lab testing, on the other hand, tests for contaminants that can cause both short- and long-term illnesses for you and your family.

McBride’s offers both certified laboratory water testing and field water testing

McBride’s Water Advantage offers both field water tests and certified laboratory testing. Our field water test is a free service that tests for iron, pH, hardness, chlorine and total dissolved solids.
Our comprehensive laboratory testing is not free, but it tests for all of the contaminants listed above that can affect the health of you and your family. We offer this testing through a New Hampshire Certified Laboratory that comes to our offices five days a week to pick up samples that we have collected from homes. Test results typically come back in a matter of days, and they provide very detailed results that make it easy for us to recommend the perfect type of water treatment system for your home.
If you have any questions about a testing lab for your drinking water, or if you’d like a water system serviced or installed in your home, contact McBride’s Water Advantage, your water softener and water filtration system dealer in Epsom, NH. We provide service all over New Hampshire, including towns like Allenstown, Pembroke and Concord, NH.
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