How pricing works

Why we won't give you a number over the phone

You've probably already called two companies and gotten two answers, and neither one had seen your water.

Here's what that number actually is: an average. It's what that company's typical customer spends, quoted to you before anyone knows whether you're typical. If your water is simpler than average, you just got quoted too much. If it's harder than average, you got quoted too little and the real number shows up later.

We'd rather be slower and right.

The lab report determines the build. The build determines the price. That's the whole model, and it's why the assessment comes first.

What actually drives the number

Five things, in roughly the order they matter:

1. What's in the water. Iron and manganese need one kind of stage. Hardness needs another. Arsenic, uranium, and nitrate each need something specific and none of them are handled by a softener. Sulfur is its own problem. A well with one issue and a well with four aren't the same job at any price.

2. How much of it there is. Concentration decides sizing and media selection. Two wells can both show iron and need completely different equipment.

3. Your house. Bathroom count, household size, whether the laundry runs while two showers are going. Sizing a system for a three-bath house like it's a one-bath house is how you end up with soft water on the main floor and hard water upstairs at 7 a.m.

4. Your well. Depth, pump, existing pressure. What flow the system has to work inside of.

5. Where the equipment goes. A clean garage wall with a drain nearby is a different install than a crawlspace.

One recommendation, not a menu

When we sit down with your results, you get one recommendation, the build your report calls for.

We're not going to show you three columns and let you pick. Good-better-best exists to make the middle option feel reasonable, and it works, and it's a sales technique rather than an engineering one. Your water doesn't have three answers.

Three levels exist, and which one you're at is decided by your lab report, not your budget:

• Essential, for water where the report is clean or close to it. Fewer stages because fewer are called for. It is a prescription level, not a discount version.
• Complete, the common answer on a North Idaho well with two or three real issues.
• Total Home, where the report is heavy, or where the house is large enough that capacity itself is the constraint.

An Essential customer isn't buying less than a Complete customer. They're buying what their water needs.

What we won't do

We won't build below what the report calls for. If the numbers say you need a stage and you'd rather skip it, we'll say no. Not to be difficult, because we put your target numbers in writing at 30 days, and we can't stand behind numbers we deliberately underbuilt for.

We won't phase it. "Do half now, half next year" sounds accommodating and produces a system that doesn't hit spec in the meantime, which means there's nothing to verify and nothing to stand behind.

We won't sell you a cartridge you can only buy from us. Standard sizes, standard media, open service. You could hire someone else next year and they'd be able to work on it.

If the number doesn't work, we'd rather talk about the terms than the build. Payment shape is flexible. The prescription isn't. And if it still doesn't work, we'll say that plainly and you'll have a lab report either way.

What's included, every time

• The system, built to your report
• Professional installation, scheduled and managed by Freehold
• The 30-Day Verification, your target numbers in writing, re-tested at 30 days, made right if they're off
• Year one of Freehold Care, the service plan, included
• The Open-Network Promise, standard parts, open service, no cartridge you can only buy here
• One-year workmanship warranty
• A contract that transfers if you sell the house
• Three days to cancel, no questions

And the assessment fee credited in full against all of it.

The number nobody quotes you

The system you already own has a price too, if you keep it.

A softener that's been running hard for a decade is using more salt than it should to do less work. Iron that isn't being removed is going into a water heater, a dishwasher, and a set of fixtures. Scale on a heating element costs efficiency continuously and shortens the life of the appliance.

We're not going to put a dollar figure on that for you, because any figure we made up would be made up. But it's the reason the comparison isn't "system versus nothing", it's "system versus the thing that's already happening."