Why was this water treatment system so complicated and expensive?

Today I consulted at an amazing job. It was for a water system that feeds a large home, guest house, lawn irrigation, and a barn. This was the most impressive home water system I have ever seen, consisting of two wells, a 10,000 gallon storage tank, an industrial size 300,000 grain water softener, an industrial sediment filter, an industrial 50 gallon per minute UV light, and two 300 gallon pressure tanks with industrial re-pressurization pumps.

The most amazing part of the installation is that it is at least 10 times more than what was needed. There are small towns in third world countries that could never utilize the full capacity of this system, but here was this Leviathan of a system. This was a colossal, world class, diamond studded oversold job, so I started asking the property manager some questions, the most important being, what water treatment company sold and installed this system. The answer amazed me. No water treatment company was consulted on the design of the system, it was designed by an engineer.

I proceeded to describe to the property manager why there were so many problems with the system, starting with the fact that the irrigation system was fed by soft water, and that is why such a gigantic softener had been utilized and why the homeowner now had to foot the bill for much more (and much more expensive) potassium chloride, since irrigating with salt softened water could potentially kill grass. Then I pointed out that the $10,000.00 control panel (which has already been knocked out of commission by lightning twice) could have been replaced with a few hundred dollars worth of float valves and off the shelf pressure switches (these are just two of a dozen problems). I then asked what consulting fee the engineer had been paid to design the system, and the answer to why this system was so complicated became apparent: the engineer was paid a percentage of the total cost of the job.

Wow. All I can say is that if you are getting an engineer to design something, you may consider a flat fee, and also, you may consider that an expert contractor in whatever field that project is in should be consulted from day one of the design through the start of contracted maintenance. This wealthy customer was suckered and will continue to pay much higher service fees on this water equipment for years to come.

Ted Mullen is a licensed water treatment contractor. If you have any questions about water quality, or if you are in the greater Danbury area and would like to have Ted speak to your group about water quality issues, please email at tedmullen@hotmail.com