The Town of Round Hill pumps its water from wells, and its 2025 water quality report puts hardness between 115 and 317 mg/L on the main system, about 6.7 to 18.5 grains a gallon, with the separate Stoneleigh system at 182. The USGS calls anything past 180 very hard, and the Town’s handbook names the water heater as one of the places that calcium collects over time.
Hot water holds less calcium in solution than cold, so a tank on this water lays down a crust on its bottom every year, noticed or not. About four in ten owner homes in 20141 burn propane, and on a propane water heater the flush comes with a look at the burner, the flame and the flue, since a crust between the flame and the water sends heat up the flue instead.
A tankless takes it harder still, because the water squeezes through a narrow heat exchanger. Navien’s installation manual puts a tankless in 9 to 12 grain water on a yearly flush, and above 12 grains, which the top of the Town’s range clears easily, it calls a softener or its own scale treatment required. Without treatment, a yearly descale at $300 is the least it should get.
The flush comes with a whole-home plumbing check, and in Round Hill the pressure reading on it means something. Loudoun County has required a pressure reducing valve on new water services for years, the Town’s report says those valves wear and can clog, and on Stoneleigh the Town is looking at valves of its own for the lower parts of the community. Past the Town’s service area, a house on its own well has no report at all: a hardness test at the tap is how you’d know, and the well itself is a well company’s.