The dreaded question "Do I NEED a water softener?"

Got a call from an old acquaintance who found out I was in the water business. He and his wife had been contacted by a water treatment "dealer" via a "bottle drop" campaign. This is where a water treatment company leaves a small plastic bottle and an official looking questionnaire at your mailbox or front door, asking for the bottle to be filled with water and the questionnaire be filled out. Many people mistake these official looking items as being from the town or water district. This is very advantageous for (if not deceitful of) the water treatment company who uses your answers on the survey to try and sell you water equipment. One question I almost always see on any variation of this scheming questionnaire is "Would you like to improve the quality of your water?" My answer to that is "Who wouldn't", and almost everyone says that they would like to improve the quality of their water.

After the bottles and questionnaires are collected, the water treatment company takes your water samples and does a very rudimentary couple of tests and will excitedly call you with the "results", of course having your filled in questionnaire right in front of them when they call. Bordering on the edge of what is legal, they will scare or entice you into allowing a "technician" into your home for further "tests". In this case "technician" means well trained salesman.

Now back to my old acquaintance - the salesman came out and got the wife so worried about the quality of the water that she and the salesman pressured the husband into a purchase. Luckily Connecticut and many other states have a 3 day cancel law which gives people the right to cancel a purchase like a water system without penalty. This gave the husband enough time to find my number and give me a call.

Here is what the salesman sold the folks: A super high end water softener for $3295.00 plus installation and a reverse osmosis system for $1995.00, installation included. Of course, at those prices, I can understand why anyone might ask for a second opinion.

"Ted" he asked "do you know if I really need this system?"

Now, I sell and service water treatment systems for a living, and have helped many people get the correct water treatment system for a home, and many times, that has included a water softener. But here is a little secret about water treatment that water treatment marketing companies (as opposed to licensed water treatment service companies) don't want you to know - IN MOST CASES, UNLESS YOU SEE SOME SORT OF STAINING OR BUILD UP OF WHITE OR BROWN CRUD, YOU MOST LIKELY DO NOT NEED A WATER SOFTENER. My acquaintance had lived in the home for 18 years and never had an issue with the water. There was no cruddy white buildup, no brown staining, the dishwasher and clothes washer worked fine, and he had only replaced the water heater once.

Of course, the salesman had tested and found that the water was 6 grains hard, which is moderate in my area and MAY warrant a water softener but there is another secret about hard water that you need to know - PROBLEM HARD WATER IS A FUNCTION OF TWO ISSUES and the amount of hardness is only one of those issues. The other issue is the pH of the water. You could have a good amount of calcium and magnesium hardness in the water, but if the pH is slightly acidic (say between 6.5 and 6.9), then the hardness will never show up on faucet spouts and shower curtains and other places. On the other hand, I have customers with only 2 grains of hardness and a pH of 8, and they had to get a water softener because that small amount of hardness clogged the domestic hot water coil in their boiler and coated the faucet spouts. Acidic water keeps minerals from depositing while base water will encourage a lot of depositing.

I tested the water and found that the pH was 6.7, just as I thought it would be. I told the husband that he didn't need a softener. After discussing the water a little further, I found that the wife's concern was really the drinking water and that she was tired of dealing with the water bottles she brought home from the store. I suggested an industry standard reverse osmosis system for significantly less than the $1995.00 price of the other company, and everyone was happy (except the salesman who's sale was cancelled).

If you have questions about water or are in the greater Danbury area and would like to have me speak to your group about water, email me at tedmullen@hotmail.com