Frequently Asked Questions

It depends on what your water test shows, which is why we test before we quote. As a rough guide, national cost guides put an installed water softener somewhere around $1,500 to $4,000 depending on capacity and prefilters, an under-sink reverse osmosis system from a few hundred dollars to about $1,500, and whole-house filtration or a full well treatment train (sediment, iron or sulfur, softening, UV) from a couple of thousand dollars up, depending on the media and the flow rate the home needs. Those are typical ranges, not our prices. Our estimate is free and written for your home: the test results, the equipment we recommend, and why. If a smaller system solves the problem, that is what we quote. We would rather earn a customer for the next twenty years than oversell one job.

Call (512) 587-8188 or send the Get Free Estimate form and we will set up a time during business hours: Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm; we are closed on weekends. The first visit is the water test and a look at where the equipment would go: the main line, a drain, an electrical outlet, and on a well, the pressure tank and wellhead. From there we put together a written estimate. Installs are scheduled the same way, on the earliest business-day slot that works for you, and we do not make turnaround promises we cannot keep. Most homes around Spicewood and Lake Travis are close to our base, and Austin, Cedar Park, Leander, Marble Falls, Dripping Springs and Johnson City are all inside our service area.

Yes. Absolute Water Solutions holds Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) Water Treatment license WT001370, and the company is insured. Texas licenses water treatment specialists through TCEQ for installing, exchanging and servicing residential and commercial treatment equipment, so it is worth asking any company you talk to for their license number before they touch your plumbing. Every install we do is done by our own crew (100% of our jobs, no subcontractors), so the people working in your home are ours, under our TCEQ license, and the company is insured. We have been doing this since 2003, with over 1,000 projects completed across Travis, Burnet, Hays, Blanco, Williamson and Llano counties.

They solve different problems, and many homes around Lake Travis need both. A softener removes hardness: the calcium and magnesium that leave crust on faucets, spots on glassware and scale inside the water heater. A whole-house filter removes chlorine or chloramine, sediment and the taste and odor that come with municipal water, and on a well it can handle iron, sulfur and cloudiness. Neither does the other's job: a carbon filter will not stop scale, and a softener will not take the pool smell out of your shower. The water test tells us which you need. On most utility water around the lake (Lakeway, Cedar Park, Leander, Horseshoe Bay), the hardness is high enough to warrant a softener, and chloramine makes catalytic carbon worth adding. On a well, it is usually a bigger conversation.

Yes. Reverse osmosis is one of the most thoroughly proven ways to make drinking water at the tap: it pushes water through a membrane fine enough to reject dissolved solids, lead, arsenic, nitrates, PFAS and most of what a carbon filter alone cannot touch. The result is very low-mineral water, which some people find flat. That is a taste preference, not a safety issue (the minerals your body needs come overwhelmingly from food), and we can add a remineralization stage that puts a little calcium and magnesium back if you prefer the taste. RO is a point-of-use system: it treats the kitchen sink and, optionally, the refrigerator line, not the whole house. If hardness or chlorine is bothering you in the shower, that is a separate system, and we will say so on the estimate.

TCEQ recommends testing a private well at least once a year for bacteria and nitrates, and we agree, nobody else is watching it. Test again any time the water changes taste, color or smell, after a flood or heavy runoff (spring rains stir up sediment and can carry bacteria into the well), after any work on the pump or wellhead, and before a new baby or an immune-compromised family member moves in. If you are buying a home with a well, test before closing. Trinity aquifer wells across Hays and Blanco counties and Ellenburger wells around Marble Falls and Horseshoe Bay tend to be very hard and can carry iron, sulfur and, in some formations, radium, so a broader lab panel on the first test is worth the cost. We pull the sample and walk you through the results.

Probably, though what kind depends on who delivers it. Lake Travis and Lake Austin water is limestone water. Austin Water softens it at the plant (to roughly 5 to 6 grains per gallon, which is still scale-forming), but most of the districts around the lake do not: Travis County WCID 17, Lakeway MUD and Cedar Park deliver water in the 10 to 11 grain range, which is hard by any standard. Every utility disinfects, and most use chloramine, which lingers in the water and gets past ordinary carbon. Turbidity spikes after floods have triggered boil-water notices in Austin and on the WTCPUA system more than once. A softener plus catalytic carbon covers most lake-water homes; a UV stage adds protection if the notices worry you. Homes on a raw lake intake are a different job, see our surface water treatment page.

We are based in Spicewood, on the south shore of Lake Travis, and work across Travis, Burnet, Hays, Blanco, Williamson and Llano counties. That includes the lake communities (Briarcliff, Highland Lake Estates, Lakeway, Bee Cave and Lago Vista), the Highland Lakes towns of Marble Falls and Horseshoe Bay, the Hill Country well country around Dripping Springs, Johnson City and Round Mountain, and the north side of the metro: Austin, Cedar Park, Leander and Liberty Hill. If your address is not on that list but you are within a reasonable drive of Spicewood, call (512) 587-8188 and ask; we take on jobs outside the core area when the drive makes sense. Residential and commercial, on city water, well water or a lake intake.

We test your water and look at your plumbing. The in-home test covers hardness, chlorine or chloramine, TDS, pH and iron; for wells, lake intakes and anything that needs a closer look, we pull a sample for a lab panel that includes bacteria and nitrates. Then we check where a system would go: the main line, a drain for a softener or RO, an outlet, the pressure tank on a well, and ask how many people live in the house and what has been bothering you. We explain the results in plain language: what is a health question, what is a nuisance, and what is not worth treating. You get a written free estimate for the system that fits. There is no obligation, and we do not do the hard sell. The test does the talking.

Less than most people expect, but it is not zero. A softener needs salt in the brine tank, how often depends on your hardness and water use, but checking it monthly is a good habit. Sediment and carbon cartridges are changed on a schedule that depends on your water; a whole-house carbon tank lasts years. A reverse osmosis system has prefilters that change about yearly and a membrane that lasts several years. A UV system needs a new lamp about once a year and a clean quartz sleeve, since the lamp loses output long before it burns out. Iron and sulfur filters backwash themselves but should be checked periodically. We set the schedule up with you at install, and you can call (512) 587-8188 during business hours when it is time.

First, stop drinking it untreated: use bottled water, or bring tap water to a rolling boil for one minute before drinking, cooking, making ice or brushing teeth. Then call (512) 587-8188 or send the estimate form and we will schedule a visit during business hours, Monday through Friday, 8am to 5pm (the earliest business-day slot we have). We do not offer after-hours service, and we will not pretend otherwise; the boil-water step keeps your family safe in the meantime. On the visit we check the wellhead and cap for the obvious entry points, confirm the result, and talk through the fix. For most Hill Country wells that is a UV system, sometimes with a sediment prefilter ahead of it so the light reaches every drop, followed by a shock chlorination of the well and a retest to confirm the water is clear.