A UV lamp has exactly one job, and it is the one job no filter in the house can do: kill the living things in the water. Sediment filters catch sand. Carbon takes out chlorine and taste. A softener deals with hardness. None of them touch a coliform bacterium, a Giardia cyst or a virus, which is why a Hill Country well can run crystal clear through three stages of treatment and still come back positive from the lab.
The Viqua Professional Series is the ultraviolet system we install for that job. We install Viqua UV units on private wells and lake-intake homes around Spicewood, always as one stage in a train the water test designed, never as a stand-alone box.
What the Viqua Professional Series is
Viqua builds the Professional Series as a cost-effective residential UV system for safer drinking water straight from the faucet. Water passes through a durable stainless steel chamber around the lamp; the stainless build prolongs the unit's life and eliminates degradation of the ultraviolet light over time. It is designed and tested to protect against Cryptosporidium and Giardia, harmful bacteria such as E. coli, and viruses that are not visible to the naked eye.
The lamps are specially designed and tested to hold a consistent, reliable ultraviolet output for their entire 9,000-hour life, so the dose does not quietly fade before the lamp is due. And the power supply visually displays remaining lamp life and goes into alarm if the lamp fails. Its case is sealed against accidental water intrusion and is fully CSA and CE compliant.
The water problem it solves west of Austin
Nobody tests a private well but the owner, and the Hill Country gives wells plenty of ways to go wrong. Trinity wells toward Dripping Springs and the Ellenburger holes on the Llano Uplift are drilled through fractured limestone; after a big rain that rock can carry runoff, and whatever bacteria it picked up, straight down the borehole. Lake-intake homes on Lake Travis have no city plant at all between the water and the kitchen tap.
Bacteria never announce themselves (no smell, no stain, no cloudiness), so a lamp treating all incoming water is the permanent fix for a well that keeps testing positive.
How we decide UV is the right fit
For UV the water test means two sets of numbers. A bacteria sample goes to the lab. At the house we measure iron, hardness, turbidity and pH, since ultraviolet light disinfects only what it can see through: hardness scales the quartz sleeve, iron films it, and silt hides organisms from the lamp. The results decide what sits ahead of the chamber: a five-micron sediment prefilter at minimum, and on most Trinity and Ellenburger wells a softener or an iron filter too.
A well showing iron bacteria or a heavy load gets chlorination ahead of the lamp, covered below. And when the complaint is chloramine, byproducts or taste on district water, the answer is carbon and reverse osmosis rather than a lamp. The water purification page walks through where each tool belongs.
Installation and the lamp schedule
The Viqua chamber goes last, after the pressure tank, spin-down, cartridge prefilter and any softener or iron filter the test called for, so it sees the cleanest water in the train. Our crew wires it, sleeves it and plumbs a bypass so it can be serviced with the water still on. Every install is our own crews: TCEQ license WT001370, insured, no subcontractors.
Maintenance is a calendar item. At 9,000 rated hours the lamp is roughly a year of continuous run time, so it gets replaced on a schedule, with the sleeve coming out for inspection and cleaning during the same stop. After a bacteria job we retest before you stop boiling, and we recommend retesting after any flood, since that is when karst wells turn cloudy. The complete well-house train around the lamp is laid out on the well water treatment page.
When chlorine belongs alongside UV
Cities add safe, small amounts of chlorine to keep water clean on its way to the tap. A private well gets none of that. For wells UV cannot handle alone (hydrogen sulfide, iron bacteria, a heavy bacterial load), we pair your WaterCare treatment unit with a tank and pump that add small doses of chlorine the way a municipal plant does, so a residual is working through the plumbing, while a carbon filter strips it out again ahead of the faucets.
If the lab envelope says positive, call (512) 587-8188 during business hours, Monday through Friday, or request a free estimate. Test first; size second.