Water Wizard Book the free test
The Texas Water cat

Know your water

Your water has a postcode.

Which lake it came out of, how hard it is and what that does to your kettle all depend on which utility serves your street. Follow the cat and find out which one that is.

Follow the cat Meet her

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One

It starts in a reservoir

Ray Roberts. Lewisville. Grapevine. Lavon. Ray Hubbard. Tawakoni. Fork. Which one reaches your street depends on which utility serves it, not on which city you live in.

Two houses a mile apart can be on completely different water.

Two

That white crust is not dirt

It is calcium and magnesium the water picked up from the ground, measured in grains. Most of North Texas runs moderately hard.

It is not a health problem. It is a behaviour problem: scale on the element, spots on the glass, soap that will not lather.

Three

Your utility already published the answer

Every public water system in the country has to test its water and publish the results once a year. It is free and it is online.

We will not restate it as a letter grade or a score. A water system's rating is a real, regulated thing that the state issues, and it is not ours to invent.

Four

But nobody measured your kitchen

The report describes the water that left the plant. Between there and your sink are miles of main, your service line and your own plumbing.

That last stretch is the only one that matters to you, and it is the one we test for nothing.

The design

Every marking means something.

She was drawn before any of this existed — on paper, in one sitting, by a twelve-year-old who had opinions about all of it. The brief that came with the drawing was six lines long and specific to the paw.

  • A Texas, in blue, on the hip that faces you.
  • Aqua eyes — the one bright thing down there.
  • A reddish nose, and white inside both ears.
  • Solid black everywhere else. No exceptions.
  • One white back paw. The right one, and only that one.
  • A blue collar of fish skeletons, with a charm that says Texas Water. Blue and white bands near the tail tip, and a dark blue bow.
Three views of the cat: side, three-quarter front, and back
The original drawing of the cat

The original. Everything on this page is built from it.

The drawing came first.

Not a brief, not a mood board, not a committee. A kid drew a black cat with Texas on its hip and a collar made of fish bones, and it was better than anything a brand deck was going to produce.

The art here is that character, drawn out into scenes. Same eyes, same collar, same one white paw — the back right — in every single frame.

Still to do

She hasn't got a name yet.

That is not an oversight. Naming her belongs to the person who drew her, and she is taking suggestions.

The free test

Find out what is coming out of your tap

We come to the house, test at the kitchen sink, and tell you what is in it. No charge, and no obligation to buy anything afterwards.

We use your details to answer this and nothing else.