Three Kinds of Water, One Town
Why Dripping Springs Pools Need a Local Chemistry Program
Dripping Springs doesn't have one kind of water. It has three. The city and Dripping Springs Water Supply Corporation blend four Trinity Aquifer wells south of town with treated Lake Travis surface water bought through the West Travis County PUA. The newer subdivisions along 290 and Sawyer Ranch Road run mostly on that lake water, which is moderately hard. Acreage on Creek Road, Bell Springs Road, and Mount Gainor Road often fills from private wells pulling straight out of limestone, and that water routinely tests very hard, with total dissolved solids above 500 ppm. A growing number of homes west of town fill from rainwater collection, which is the opposite problem: almost no calcium or alkalinity, so the water is aggressive toward plaster unless someone puts hardness back in on purpose.
Three fill sources means three different starting points, and a route company that doses every pool the same way will get at least two of them wrong. That's why the first thing we do on a new Dripping Springs pool is test the fill water itself, not just the pool. It tells us whether your calcium is going to climb (well and lake fill) or crash (rainwater fill), how fast pH will drift, and whether to expect iron or manganese before they stain the finish.
Then there's the climate. Summer here runs 95 to 100°F for weeks at a stretch, pool water sits in the mid to upper 80s, and afternoon UV strips unstabilized chlorine in hours. Ashe juniper (cedar) throws pollen from December into February, live oaks drop catkins in March and April, and construction dust off the next subdivision rides the wind the rest of the year. Every one of those either consumes chlorine or clogs a filter, and usually both.
