Texas Water Book the free test
A black cat with aqua eyes and a blue Texas marking on her hip, drifting in deep water and looking at you

Follow the cat

She knows where your water has been.

All of it — the storm it fell out of, the lake it sat in, the rock it picked things up from, the plant that cleaned it, and the pipe that brought it to your kitchen. Scroll down and go with her.

Take the dive Meet her

Scroll

One

It starts as weather

Every glass of tap water in Dallas–Fort Worth was rain first. It falls north and east of the cities, onto ground that slopes toward the lakes.

Nothing about it is bottled yet, treated yet, or anybody's yet. It is just a storm over Texas.

Two

It lands in a lake

Ray Roberts. Lewisville. Grapevine. Lavon. Ray Hubbard. Tawakoni. Fork. North Texas drinks from reservoirs, and which one reaches your street depends on which utility serves it — not on which city you live in.

That is why two houses a mile apart can be on completely different water.

Three

Down here, it picks things up

Water runs over rock, and rock comes with it. Calcium and magnesium dissolve in and ride along. That is all hardness is, and it is measured in grains.

Most of North Texas runs moderately hard. It is not a health problem — it is a behaviour problem. Scale on the kettle, spots on the glass, soap that will not lather.

Four

Then the city cleans it

It is filtered, then disinfected with chloramine, which is chosen because it keeps working the whole way through the pipes rather than fading in the first mile.

Every public water system in the country has to test its water and publish the results once a year. Those reports are free, they are online, and they are where every number on this page comes from.

Five

And then it comes to your house

Miles of main, a service line, and your own plumbing and water heater — the last stretch nobody published a report about.

That is the honest gap. The city's report describes the water that left the plant. It cannot describe the water that arrived at your sink.

Six

So we come and look

A Texas Water House test is done at your own tap, in your own kitchen, and it costs nothing. You get the actual numbers for your house — hardness, what is in it, what it is doing to your appliances.

Then you decide what, if anything, you want to do about it. Plenty of houses find out they are fine.

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 cat asleep on a sunny kitchen floor beside a water cooler

The free test

Find out what is actually coming out of your tap.

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

We use your details to arrange the test and nothing else.