Water, water

Water, inside and out, has been giving me trouble the past few days.  My well water is potable, but also high in rust and particulates.  I've tried a whole-house filter which claims to take out rust, but the amount of iron in the water clearly exceeds the filter's capacity.  Moreover, the water is so hard that it leaves white deposits on everything which passes through the dishwasher.  So, reluctantly, I'll start costing out water softener systems.  Ka-ching!

This past weekend's rain has also washed away my aversion to gutters and downspouts.  I had hoped to avoid this, because my soil — rocks with a little sand mixed in — handles storm water quite well.  But that hasn't proved the case at the front (street side).  Here the volume of runoff from the roof is so great that the water flows out onto the driveway and pools.  That's a minor nuisance in summer.  In winter, however, this pooling of either rain or snowmelt will give me patches of glare ice, and perhaps even an ice rink!  I took two hard falls on the ice one evening last winter, and have no desire to repeat that "physical comedy" routine.  So, reluctantly, I'll also see what it will cost me to put gutters-and-downspouts on the front of the house, and perhaps on the two one-story wings.  Ka-ching redux! •••