Water Treatment
Services in
Doral, FL

The County, for every address. We matched each of Doral's 2020 census blocks to the County's water service area map. All 75,874 residents counted that year fall within the County's main water system, with no pockets served by a neighboring city. Medley, on Doral's northern border, works differently: the Town runs its own pipes and bills its residents for County water it buys wholesale.

Where to call. A lot of people search for "Doral water and sewer", but City Hall doesn't bill for water. Bills, low pressure and a leak in the street are the County's to handle: call Miami-Dade Water and Sewer at 305-665-7477. Questions about water quality from the plants serving northern Miami-Dade go to the County's line at 786-552-4738. Anything after your meter, from a dripping hose bib to a filter, is a plumber's job or ours.

Past the Turnpike on Doral's western edge, at the eastern end of the rock-mining lakes known as the Lake Belt, is the County's Northwest Wellfield. A 2012 Florida Senate analysis called it the largest drinking-water wellfield in Florida, supplying about 40% of Miami-Dade's water, and County water-supply documents list it among the wellfields of the Hialeah and Preston plants. The wellfield shaped the city before there was a city: from 1983 to 1985 the County put a building moratorium on the area to protect those wells, and its wellfield protection rules still limit what businesses can do in the zones around them.

For your tap, the takeaway is that your water is shallow limestone groundwater pumped close to home and treated a few miles east. The Biscayne Aquifer is close to the surface and porous, which is why the County treats it the way it does, as the next section explains.

The County says customers north of SW 8th Street, all of Doral included, get their water from the Hialeah and John E. Preston plants. Both lime-soften the water, and both send it through air-stripping towers that pull out volatile organic compounds. Those towers came out of EPA's 1985 cleanup decision for the Biscayne Aquifer Superfund sites in industrial northwest Miami-Dade, and the County still runs them today. A third source is the reverse osmosis plant run jointly by the County and the City of Hialeah, which treats brackish water from about 1,400 feet down and puts up to 3.75 million gallons a day into the County's northwest service area.

EPA's UCMR 5 survey tested each plant's finished water in 2023 and 2024. Hialeah came in at 33 and 29.9 ppt PFOS, Preston at 12 and 16, and the RO plant had none above the reporting limit in either round. The County doesn't publish which plant serves which street, and the mix shifts with demand and maintenance, so two homes a mile apart can see different numbers in the same month. A certified lab test from your own faucet answers it, and we can arrange one. Boiling doesn't remove PFAS, and softeners aren't designed for it.

The County's RO plant results show what a membrane can do about PFAS, and a kitchen-size version of it is an under-sink reverse osmosis system. Ours have five stages, carry NSF/ANSI certification and are designed to reduce lead, chromium-6 and PFAS. A sediment filter and carbon blocks clear out grit and chloramine ahead of the membrane, and the finished water waits in a small tank below the counter until you open its own faucet. Run a line to the refrigerator and the ice and door dispenser get RO water too.

Census figures show about 43% of Doral households have children under 18. For those families we usually suggest starting with the RO unit, since it covers formula, school water bottles and cooking, and it fits a condo kitchen as easily as a house.

Most of what you smell in a hot shower is chloramine. Each year the County switches its plants to free chlorine for two weeks to clean out the pipes; in 2026 that ran September 28 to October 11, and many people notice a sharper chlorine smell until it ends. Aquarium owners and anyone on home dialysis need treatment that handles both forms.

We set up whole-house water filtration as a catalytic carbon tank plumbed in right after the main shutoff. From that point on, every shower, the washing machine and the water heater get water with the chloramine gone and fewer trihalomethanes, and a softener downstream keeps its resin longer. In single-family homes in Doral Park or Doral Isles the main usually comes in along an outside wall with room for a tank. In many newer townhouses it shows up in a garage or a utility closet beside the water heater, and we pick a tank size that fits the space.

Biscayne Aquifer water is hard before treatment because it sits in limestone. The County's lime softening takes out part of the hardness, and the RO plant's water has very little, but the 2025 report doesn't list a delivered hardness number. The grains-per-gallon figure you see quoted for "Miami" online isn't County data, so we measure it at your tap.

Here the equipment is the bigger factor. Many homes built in the last 15 years have tankless water heaters, and most tankless makers set a hardness limit in the installation manual and call for scale protection above it. If your reading is over that limit, or you're already descaling the heater and replacing crusted showerheads, it makes sense to add a water softener downstream of the carbon. Its size comes from your reading and the number of people at home, and it regenerates according to the water you actually use. A low reading means no softener, and we'll say so.

Lead solder was banned for drinking-water plumbing in 1986, and only about 6% of Doral's homes date from before 1980. Homes plumbed before 1986 belong mostly to the city's first wave of building, including parts of Doral Estates and Doral Park and some early condo buildings. For those homes, a first-draw sample from the kitchen faucet settles the question, and we send it to a certified lab at no charge. For a house or condo built after 2000, we normally skip it unless you want the number.

Newer plumbing has its own habits. PEX and CPVC lines can give water a plastic taste for the first months, which a carbon stage handles. In a new tower that isn't fully occupied yet, water can sit in the risers for days and arrive warm, with less disinfectant left in it. Running the cold tap for a minute after a trip helps, and an RO unit takes care of the drinking water either way.

About 8,500 Doral homes sit in buildings of 50-plus units, including the towers in Downtown Doral and CityPlace Doral. In those buildings the County's water passes through the building's pumps and risers before it reaches you, and a whole-house system needs access to your unit's own supply line plus the association's approval. An under-sink RO unit needs neither. In gated townhouse communities the main usually belongs to your unit, but the association may control exterior walls, so we can supply the specs it asks for.

A little over half of Doral households rent. Tenants should get the owner's OK before an RO faucet goes in, and most owners agree once they see the install. Without that, a carbon filter that screws onto the shower arm handles the chloramine smell, though only RO addresses PFAS in the water you drink.

In July 2018 a contractor on the Doral Boulevard beautification project struck an unmarked 24-inch County main near NW 41st Street and NW 114th Avenue. The street flooded between 114th and 117th Avenues, Miami-Dade College's West Campus closed, and the County put the area between NW 107th Avenue and NW 136th Place, from NW 34th to NW 41st Street, under a precautionary boil water order until two days of clean tests came back.

If a notice like that covers your street, boil water for drinking and cooking even if you have filters, since home systems aren't designed to disinfect. When it's lifted, flush each tap for a few minutes, empty the ice bin and replace the RO pre-filters. Cloudy water that clears from the bottom up in a glass is just air; tan or brown water is sediment, so wait before washing whites.

Our free water test is a 20-minute stop at your kitchen sink. We measure chloramine, hardness, pH, iron and total dissolved solids, look at where the main comes in and which water heater you have, and walk through the County's report with you. For PFAS or lead at your own faucet, a sample goes to a certified lab.

Installs are usually same-day: under two hours for RO, 2 to 4 hours for a carbon filter or softener, and 4 to 6 for all three. We keep track of filter and membrane replacement dates for you, and softener salt delivery covers 33178, 33166, 33172 and 33122. Check the salt monthly, clean the brine tank once a year, plan on valve service at 5 to 7 years and fresh resin at 10 to 12.