Cahaba Water Co.
Three towns in Jefferson County drink groundwater
Irondale, Leeds and Trussville are the county's only groundwater systems. Their disinfection byproducts run at a fraction of the surface-water systems — and the same rock is why their water is hard.
Water notes
Plain explanations, including the inconvenient ones.
Everything here is sourced. Where the honest answer costs us a sale, we write that down too — the softener article is the clearest example. Every claim carries its citation at the foot of the piece, so you can check any of it against the original.
Sourced
Utility reports and
peer-reviewed research
peer-reviewed research
Specific
Birmingham numbers,
not national averages
not national averages
Compliant
The water meets every
standard. We say so.
standard. We say so.
Checkable
Every claim links
to its source
to its source
All articles
Twenty-two things worth knowing before you spend money.
Legionella water management for senior living: what the rule requires, and who owns it
The requirement is real. It is also a document your organization writes and owns — not a product, and not something anyone can sell you.
What a Birmingham restaurant actually needs from its water
You have been pitched a softener. Central Alabama Water publishes 2.2 to 13.1 grains per gallon, so the reading at your address decides this one.
Why your ice is cloudy, and whether a filter actually fixes it
Two of the five common causes are service calls, not filtration. Here is how to tell which one you have before you spend anything.
Backflow prevention for food service: carbonators, and why the health department cares
Carbonated water backing into copper pipe makes carbonic acid, and carbonic acid dissolves copper into the next drink you pour.
What a boil-water notice actually costs a restaurant
Not a water quality problem. An operations problem that arrives with no warning and bills you mostly in places you did not model.
Medical office water vs clinical water: the distinction vendors blur
A dermatology practice's break room and a dialysis loop are not the same problem, and are not governed by the same anything.
Storing water you do not expect to need
Most people who buy a tank are not preparing for collapse. They went through one bad week and decided not to do it again.
How much water does a household actually use in an outage?
There are three legitimate answers and they differ by a factor of nearly a hundred. Which one somebody quotes tells you what they are selling.
Water and power fail together
People buy a generator one year and think about water another year. Then the event arrives and it turns out they were always the same plan.
Rainwater in Alabama: what is legal, and what changes when you want to drink it
Collecting it is straightforward. Plumbing it into your house or drinking it moves the question out of property law entirely.
You absorb more disinfection byproducts in a ten-minute shower than from a day of drinking the water
It sounds like a sales line. It is actually a measured finding, published in Environmental Health Perspectives — and the number is larger than most people expect.
Why a pitcher filter can't fix your shower
Point-of-use and point-of-entry are not competing products. They solve different problems, and confusing them is the most common and most expensive mistake in this category.
Why your water smells like a swimming pool — and what actually removes it
Birmingham uses free chlorine rather than chloramine. That single fact determines which filter media is correct, and it's the reason some companies will try to sell you a more expensive one than you need.
Why Birmingham water tasted like dirt in May 2024
It wasn't contamination, and it wasn't your imagination. It was a compound called geosmin, and it will happen again.
Do you actually need a water softener in Birmingham?
It depends on your tap, not on the metro. Central Alabama Water publishes 2.2 to 13.1 grains per gallon — here is what that spread means for your house.
Reverse osmosis, explained without the sales pitch
How it works, what it genuinely removes, what it doesn't, and the questions that separate a well-specified system from a marked-up one.
PFOA and PFOS in Birmingham water: the honest numbers
They're detectable. They're below the federal limit. Both of those facts matter, and most of what you'll read online gets one of them wrong.
UV disinfection: when it's worth it, and when it's just an upsell
On compliant municipal water, UV is an additional barrier rather than a fix. There is one situation where it becomes genuinely important, and it isn't the one you'll be sold.
The undersized filter problem: why your water pressure dropped after you bought a water system
It's the most common complaint in residential water treatment, and it's almost always the same mistake. It is also entirely avoidable — before you buy, not after.
What actually happens when the water goes out
Central Alabama Water (formerly Birmingham Water Works) runs roughly 4,100 miles of main. Mains break. Here is what a home water outage actually looks like, and what it takes to not care.
How to read your annual water quality report
Every utility publishes one and almost nobody opens it. It takes fifteen minutes to learn, and it makes you immune to about ninety percent of water treatment sales pitches.
The $8,000 quote: how water treatment is actually sold
The free water test, the in-home presentation, the price that drops if you decide tonight. Here is the machinery behind it, and why we built this company the other way round.
Start with your own water
Most of these articles come back to the same thing: measure before you buy. Central Alabama Water publishes hardness from 2.2 to 13.1 grains per gallon, so your own reading is the number that settles it. The assessment takes a few minutes and the hardness test is free.