We take water for granted. Turn the tap on and out it comes. Yet water is a precious and scarce resource that will become even scarcer in the future. Having access to your own source of clean water through a residential well is a sensible and increasingly popular option. More than 15 million Americans rely on such water wells to provide drinking water for their households, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A water well company can offer advice about the best place to drill a well and drill it for you, setting up all the system necessary to ensure you can enjoy your new water well. Since as much as 25% of all the rain that falls in the United States becomes groundwater, accessing that groundwater for drinking makes sense. Despite this, only 26% or 79.6 billion gallons of the more than 349 billion gallons of fresh water used in the U.S every day. Well specialists determine the best and safest area to dig a well and the number of people with household wells is growing by as much as half a million a year according to NGWA estimates.

In order to construct these vital water supply systems, the more than 8,000 well drilling contractors make use of over 18,400 drilling machines. In fact almost half (44%) of Americans rely on groundwater sources for drinking water, although that includes both public and private sources. That being said, private wells are still the largest category of water wells in America, with more than 13 million year-round occupied households with wells. The state with the largest number is Michigan with over 1.1 million; Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, and Florida follow close behind. We drink the equivalent of 2,923 12 ounce cans of groundwater for every person every day, about 79.6 billion gallons.

A water well company can also help you ensure that your well remains safe and usable. It is crucial that you test your groundwater regularly. Hard water — resulting from dissolved calcium or magnesium in the water — is the most common problem and can make water taste poor if the TDS (total dissolved solids) levels rise above 1000 mg/L, but there are other issues that can also become a problem.

Changing to or supplementing your existing water system with a groundwater well constructed by a water well company can make your household more sustainable, save you money in the longer term, and cut down strain on public resources. It is a simple but effective way to help conserve water resources and make best use of the available drinking water that we have.