Local group water schemes in East rural Galway County from Headford and Gort to the West, over to Ballinasloe and Portumna to the East,generally have the highest levels of hard water found in thecountry from around 300 to over 400 parts per million of calciumcarbonate limescale, where only under 50 parts per million lime isconsidered soft water.  All of these schemes have some level ofchlorination, as required by the sanitary authorities to comply withEuropean Directives to allow bacteria free water.  Some locations in Connemara such as Renvyle are naturally soft water areas, as they sit in areas rich in granite rock which is insoluble.

Private wells all over the West of Ireland, again usually havea high level of hard water from 200 to over 500 ppm.  Most wells sufferat one point in time to the ingress of some level of bacterialinfection, due to having no back up system of chlorination as found inmost publicly supplied water.  Often private wells have the usual limescale along with iron andmanganese and possibly sulphur, the troublesome trio of well waterproblems, along with to a lesser degree, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia,heavy metals and a range of less problematic, odours, colours andtastes, depending on the levels of contamination.