Johnson City, Tennessee
Water Filtration in
Johnson City, TN
Your local water experts.
Johnson City’s tap water meets every federal standard. It also contains nine contaminants above the Environmental Working Group’s health-based guidelines. We can show you exactly what that means for your home.
What’s actually in Johnson City’s tap water?
Johnson City’s tap water comes from the Watauga River and Unicoi Springs, treated at the Watauga and Unicoi Springs Water Treatment Plants. It meets every federal health-based standard set by the EPA. That part is true and worth saying out loud.
Here’s the part most people don’t know.
According to the EWG Tap Water Database, nine contaminants in Johnson City’s water exceed the Environmental Working Group’s health-based guidelines. The biggest gaps are in a category called disinfection byproducts: chemicals that form when chlorine reacts with organic matter in source water. They’re a known cancer risk, which is why the EPA regulates them at all under the Stage 2 Disinfectants and Disinfection Byproducts Rule.
Here are numbers on the top 4 contaminants, pulled directly from EWG’s report on Johnson City Water Department:
TTHMs
Total Trihalomethanes
HAA9
Haloacetic Acids
Chloroform
Bromodichloromethane
All four contaminants fall under the EPA’s federal legal limit — but federal standards haven’t been updated in almost 20 years. EWG’s health guidelines reflect current cancer-risk research.
The reality is, “legal” and “safe” haven’t been the same conversation for a long time. Federal limits for most of these contaminants haven’t been updated in nearly 20 years. EWG’s guidelines reflect more recent peer-reviewed cancer-risk research. If you’ve ever wondered why your shower water sometimes smells like a swimming pool, or why your skin feels different after a long bath, this is part of the answer.
The contaminants in Johnson City’s water are the kind that whole-home carbon filtration and reverse osmosis are designed to remove. Once you see your numbers, you can make your own call.
One thing worth knowing about these contaminants: drinking the water isn’t actually how most of the exposure happens.
Trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids are volatile. When you turn on a hot shower, they vaporize out of the water and into the air. You breathe them in. Your skin absorbs them. Peer-reviewed research on THM exposure has shown that a standard shower gives you a higher dose than everything you drink in a day. That’s true in Johnson City. It’s true in every chlorinated municipal system.
It’s also why a kitchen faucet filter, no matter how good it is, only handles part of the problem. The faucet covers your drinking and cooking water. It doesn’t cover the shower, the bath, or the washing machine. Whole-home carbon filtration does. That’s the difference, and it’s the reason EWG recommends whole-home activated carbon specifically for the contaminants in Johnson City’s water.
Before Mountain View installed my water, on public, smelled like a swimming pool. The chlorine smell was that bad. I took a shower this morning and for the first time I could smell my soap over the water. My water before was extremely hard and I itched after each shower. Today, my skin felt great. The reverse osmosis water tap comes out quickly and tastes fantastic; like our Berkey. Money well spent.
Emmett Brost
Google ReviewHow does our Johnson City water testing process work?
We’ve been doing this long enough that the process is the process. Here’s how it goes.
You schedule a free water test.
We come to your house, run the test on your kitchen counter, and show you what’s in your specific water. Two homes on the same street can have different results depending on plumbing, age of pipes, and where you sit on the distribution system.
We explain what we find, in plain language.
Our goal is to help you feel educated and empowered to make the best choice for your home and family. Learn more about our comprehensive water testing process here.
You decide if you want to do something about it.
If you do, we’ll walk you through what kind of system actually fits your home and your budget. If you don’t, you’ve still got the test results and the knowledge. That’s yours to keep.
If you’ve been thinking about your water for a while and just haven’t gotten around to it, this is the easiest first step there is. You’ll walk away with the test results and the knowledge either way. We’ve been able to grow to over 1,000 customers across the Tri-Cities without spending money on aggressive sales tactics. Word gets around when people feel respected.
What kind of filtration system does a Johnson City home actually need?
It depends on your water and what you care about most. The short version:
Whole-Home Carbon Filtration
For chlorine, taste, and skin issues across the whole house
EWG specifically recommends activated carbon and reverse osmosis for the disinfection byproducts present in Johnson City’s water. A carbon system handles them at every tap and showerhead.
Reverse Osmosis
For the highest-grade drinking water at your kitchen sink
Reverse osmosis pushes water through a membrane fine enough to catch most contaminants, including the ones a carbon filter can’t.
Water Softener
For hardness, dry skin, spotted dishes, and shorter appliance lifespans
Johnson City’s water has natural mineral hardness from the limestone geology in this region. Curious what hard water is actually costing you? Our expense calculator breaks it down in about three minutes.
Most homes we work with end up with some combination, and the right combination depends on what your test shows. That’s why the test comes first. Always.
We install Hague Quality Water systems, backed by 25-year warranties and serviced by our local team for the life of the system.
What Johnson City residents ask us
Johnson City’s water meets every federal EPA standard for drinking water safety. It also contains nine contaminants that exceed the Environmental Working Group’s health-based guidelines, which are stricter than the federal standards because federal limits haven’t been updated in nearly 20 years. Whether that gap matters to your family is a personal decision. Most of our customers decide it does, especially the ones with young kids.
Johnson City Water Department draws from the Watauga River and Unicoi Springs, treated at the Watauga and Unicoi Springs Water Treatment Plants. Both are surface water sources, which is part of why disinfection byproducts are a factor: chlorine reacts with the organic matter naturally present in surface water.
That depends on what you want to filter and where. A point-of-use filter at the sink protects your drinking and cooking water. A whole-home system also protects your shower, bath, laundry, and skin. Most Johnson City families we work with want both, but plenty start with one and add the other later.
It varies based on your home, your water, and the kind of system that fits. We don’t quote a price until we’ve actually tested your water and seen your setup, because anything else is a guess. The free water test is the starting point, and there’s no obligation after.
Yes, all of them. We’ve installed systems in homes across Johnson City proper, the Tree Streets neighborhood, North Johnson City, Jonesborough, and the surrounding Washington County area.
Why do Johnson City families choose Mountain View for water filtration?
We live here. Dan started Mountain View Pure Water & Air in the Tri-Cities almost ten years ago because his dad was a water treatment technician and he saw how few people in the area had real, no-pressure information about their own water. Our team is local. Our installs are local. Our service after the sale is local. We installed our first Johnson City system in 2016. That customer is still with us.
That’s the whole story. If you want to know what’s in your water, we’ll come show you.
Schedule your free
water test
Just the data and a conversation. We’ll come to your home in Johnson City, the Tree Streets, North Johnson City, Jonesborough, or anywhere in the Tri-Cities, run the test on your kitchen counter, and explain what we find.