Orlando has the mildest water of the three metros we serve. We'll say that plainly rather than pretend otherwise — and then we'll tell you why 7 grains per gallon is still seven times harder than water that qualifies as soft.
Figures below come from the Orlando Utilities Commission's own published information and its 2025 Water Quality Report.
For context: water is only classified as soft below 1 grain per gallon. Orlando's 129 ppm sits inside the USGS “hard” band (121–180 mg/L). It's the difference between a nuisance and a crisis — not the difference between a problem and no problem. If you've noticed spots on glassware or crust on your shower head, that's what 7 gpg looks like.
OUC draws 100% of its water from the Lower Floridan aquifer, roughly a quarter mile below Orlando. Like Jacksonville, that means limestone — and limestone means dissolved calcium and magnesium.
Orlando comes out softer than Jacksonville despite drawing from the same aquifer system, because aquifer chemistry varies by depth and location. The Lower Floridan under Central Florida simply hands OUC a milder starting point than the wells serving Duval County.
Two other things distinguish Orlando's water. OUC uses ozone first for taste, odor and hydrogen sulfide removal, then chlorine — and it explicitly does not use chloramine, unlike Tampa. And as of July 1, 2025, OUC stopped adding fluoride in response to Florida SB 700; only naturally occurring fluoride remains.
In the Environmental Working Group's database, seven substances exceed an EWG health guideline out of sixteen detected in OUC water — the fewest total detections of our three metros.
Haloacetic acids and trihalomethanes lead OUC's EWG profile, as they do in Jacksonville. Both were measured below their federal legal limits — TTHMs at 53.4 ppb against a limit of 80.
Detected at 0.84 pCi/L against a federal limit of 5 pCi/L. Radium occurs naturally in the Floridan aquifer; it shows up in Jacksonville's profile too, at a lower level.
OUC's 2025 report states it found no detectable quantities of any of the 29 PFAS substances in federal monitoring rounds in October 2024 and April 2025.
How to read those numbers honestly. EWG health guidelines are not legal standards — they are stricter than federal limits by design, and exceeding one is not a violation. OUC reported zero MCL violations in its 2025 water quality report and was in compliance with federal health-based standards in the most recent EPA-assessed quarter. OUC has publicly disputed EWG's framing, noting that EWG's standards differ from both EPA and FDEP requirements.
We're showing you both because you'll find both if you go looking, and we'd rather you hear the caveat from us.
OUC serves the City of Orlando and portions of Orange County. Much of Greater Orlando is on other utilities entirely — or on a private well — and those readings can be very different from OUC's.
If you're outside OUC's territory, the 129 ppm figure on this page doesn't describe your water. That's exactly why we test at your tap instead of quoting from a utility report.
At 7 grains per gallon on OUC water, a softener is a comfort-and-longevity purchase rather than an emergency. On a Central Florida well, it's often a different conversation entirely.
At Orlando's hardness, a 30,000-grain system regenerates less often than it would in Jacksonville — which means less salt and lower running cost. The activated carbon stage is arguably the bigger win here, since OUC uses free chlorine you can taste.
Pro Plus detailsUnder-sink reverse osmosis for drinking and cooking. Worth a look if disinfection byproducts concern you, or if your household has been buying bottled water out of habit.
RO detailsA technician comes out, tests your water at the tap, and shows you the results on the spot. It takes about twenty minutes and costs nothing. If you don't want a system afterward, that's a perfectly fine outcome.