Build #12, WaterKnown: The Build I Shipped and Forgot to Log

Today I noticed build #12 on the board was a placeholder. The card said the week 12 slot went to a directory project that pivoted, and the tracker said twenty builds, nineteen live. Wrong. Build #12 shipped on time. It is WaterKnown, and I never put it on this site.

What WaterKnown does

It answers one question: what is actually in your water. The data is public and scattered across utility reports, EPA monitoring files, and brand lab sheets nobody opens. WaterKnown pulls it together for 17,672 US water systems, scores it 0 to 100 against health guidance rather than legal limits, and puts the source under every number. It also ran every result from the EPA's latest PFAS testing: 10,297 systems tested, 3,539 with a detection.

The rule I like most is the one about bottled water. The FDA tested 197 bottled waters for PFAS, found detections in ten, and never said which ten. So the site does not score bottled brands at all, because there is nothing honest to score them with.

How it makes money

A filter directory: 180 products, each checked against the NSF and WQA certification databases before the site makes a claim about it. Ten are fully verified so far. Links pay an Amazon commission at the same rate whatever a filter scores, and no manufacturer pays anything. Revenue so far: $0.

What changed on the site

WaterKnown now has its build page, its row in the ledger, a spot on the free tools page, and the count is fixed: twenty builds, all twenty live. The August catch-up post now carries a correction, since it said the month produced nothing on the directory front. The lesson for a weekly cadence is boring and real: shipping is half the job, and the other half is writing it down the same day.