Plumbing Service Areas in Northeast Indiana

Fort Wayne City Utilities treats surface water from the St. Joseph River at the Three Rivers Filtration Plant and softens it with lime. Its 2026 report put average hardness at 130 mg/L for 2025, a range of 94 to 174, which the utility itself describes as moderately soft. That is roughly 7.6 grains per gallon.

New Haven buys finished water from that same plant but publishes its own number: 160 ppm, a range of 91 to 160, or about 9.4 grains.

Huntertown is not on Fort Wayne water at all. The town draws its own groundwater from wells in the Steuben Morainal Lake Area Aquifer System and disinfects with chlorine, with no municipal softening. It publishes no hardness figure, so on Huntertown water the only honest answer is to have yours tested.

If a salesperson has quoted you a far higher hardness number for Fort Wayne than the utility reports, check it against the city's own water quality report before you buy anything. We install water softeners and filtration systems, and the right system starts with the real number for your address.

Indiana requires testable backflow assemblies to be tested at least once a year, by a tester registered with IDEM, with the results reported to both the water utility and the customer within 30 days on State Form 55788. That rule is the same in every town on this page.

What changes is where the report goes. In Fort Wayne, results are filed electronically through TrackMyBackflow.com, which City Utilities runs under contract with Aqua Backflow, and the city's own code gives ten calendar days. Other towns run their own programs and their own paperwork.

We do the annual test and the compliance documentation for the water authority that covers your address, so the filing is not your problem.

Plumbing is licensed at the state level in Indiana, through the Indiana Plumbing Commission, so the same license applies across county lines. Counties and towns can still add their own registration or permit requirements on top of it.

In Allen County, permits run through the Allen County Building Department at 200 E. Berry St., Suite 180, (260) 449-7131. Which permits a job needs depends on the work and the address. Ask us before the job starts and we will tell you what applies.