Servicing Your "Competitor's" Products - Orphan Water Systems

Orphan Water Systems.  These are filtration products that a customer owns and either there never was a servicing contractor or the customer no longer has contact with the original servicing company due to them going out of business or worse (the customer can't stand dealing with them anymore).  There are two methods of dealing with these orphan systems and their owners.

The first and unfortunately most pervasive method is for a water treatment company have its sales team  say something along these lines,  "I have never seen this kind of junk before, nobody services this stuff, nobody knows where to find parts for these, and so on.  Here is a proposal for $7500.00 for new Super Duper Brand water filter equipment."

The second is the approach less common but the more fair for the customer.  A qualified water treatment company should be able to exact repairs on any system that actually is repairable.  Even if it is a big box store purchase, even if it was sold by a competitor, and most importantly, even if the water treatment company really needs the money from a sale.

Here is my suggestion for those seeking service on an orphan water system.  When you call around to water treatment companies tell them you need a service technician to check out the system.  If the guy shows up with fancy gold chains and absolutely no dirt on his clothes or shoes and smells of cologne, he is not a water technician, he is a salesman who will make a pretend show of servicing your water treatment system.  It won't be long before he says the above phrases or something similar and then tell you that he can provide you a new system at some high price.

Another suggestion, and this is for those who own one of the GE, Whirlpool, or Water Boss or other systems bought at the home center or Walmart and are having trouble with it; call the manufacturer and find who the local service company is.  This is not a company who works for the manufacturer, but will work for you, for a fee, to get your system up and running.  Usually it is a company with staff experienced working on just about every of the dozens of different brands of equipment.

Enjoying Your Job Too Much! We need to enjoy results instead.

The worst plumber you can have install a water system is one who thoroughly enjoys doing plumbing work.  I just installed a new system in a home where the previous installation consisted of a crisscrossed jumble of copper tubing and  fittings, especially elbows.  Above are some pictures of some of the old system after it had been removed.  The main problem here was the heavy iron load that clogged the 3/4" copper tubing and jammed the controls of the old filter system.  It was made worse due to the fact that every elbow and fitting acted as a restriction to the flow of water.  The copper tubing and fittings clogged with solid iron.  The new system is twice the size with less than a third the number of elbows.

But this goes beyond plumbing and water filtration.  It is about philosophy in your work and career.  The plumber who installed this old system loved doing plumbing work and would rather just get right into the plumbing instead of planning everything out.  It turned into a disaster.  What we should be doing in our jobs is loving results and not the actual process.  A love of results ensures the best outcome for clients and customers.  A love of the process, in this case the process of installing plumbing fittings, created a non functioning mess.

There are fields where this is worse.  A few years ago, my wife had a small cyst on her wrist and she went to the doctor.  This man enjoyed surgery and immediately wanted to operate on the wrist.  My wife decided to wait and see, but the doctor actually called our home several times to pressure her into going under the knife.  I am not sure if this is ethical in medicine.  She decided to stop taking his calls and eventually, the cyst went away on its own.  This doctor was in love with the process of surgery and most likely the money he earned from surgery and had no regard for the long term ramifications of surgery on such a delicate and fine tuned part of the body.

And there are others.  How about our 24 hour news channels?  They will be at the scene of one or another disaster or tragedy and they just love reporting and getting a scoop so much that they fling countless handfuls of poop in all directions, not caring about accuracy or the damage their wild reporting causes.  And our legislators who love writing laws so much they ignore perfectly good laws that are already on the books and are not being enforced.  There are countless others, but I am just a lowly plumbing contractor who works in the water treatment field.  I would love to read your examples if you write them as a response to this blog.

www.cleanwaterman.com

Simple Smelly Water Fix

I visited a customer today with a rotten egg smell in their water.  There was a cartridge pre-filter and a water softener.  After a little investigation I found that the water coming out of the well tank, which precedes any water treatment, had no odor.  I then opened the pre-filter and found that the cartridge was covered with an almost clear slimy substance.  That was the source of the odor.

The filter is collecting some sort of organic material from the well and it is decomposing and giving off a rotten egg odor.  In this instance, the customer needs to change the cartridge more frequently or have an automatic backwashing filter installed to prevent the organic material from sitting long enough to decompose.

www.cleanwaterman.com

Water Softener And Filter Warranties: Online Sales.

Clean Water Man:

I bought a water softener online at a huge discount, but I found out the discount was not so much after I had to pay a plumber to install it and now it appears there is a problem and while the internet company said in its advertising that there was a three year warranty, they have no idea what the problem is and have been unable to help me repair it over the phone and email contacts.

My plumber did a wonderful job installing the system, but he doesn't know how to diagnose or even repair problems with a water softener and I have already paid him for a service call where all he could do is tell me he doesn't know what the problem was.  What do I do?  Now that it is full of water and installed, how am I supposed to pack it up and send it back to Ohio?

Sincerely,

Internet Shopper

Internet Shopper:

Luckily I can repair every brand of water equipment and I came out and fixed your water softener.  It needed a small part that must have been broken during assembly or shipping.  It was unable to draw brine with that broken fitting and the softener will work fine until the next problem.  I charged you for the part since it cost less than a second service call that I would have had to make if you called the Ohio company and asked them to send another part.  Hopefully they will refund you for the expense on the part.  They will not refund you the cost for the plumber's service call.  They will not refund you the cost of my service call, so you are getting pretty close, as far as cost is concerned, to what you would have paid me or another local water treatment dealer to buy it locally.  And this was the first problem.

As far as a warranty is concerned, I wonder how any company that is not local can say they are offering a warranty.  How are they going to repair it from hundreds of miles away?  How are they going to test repairs?  The warranty is wishful thinking.  But if you are lucky and there are no problems, you can save a few dollars.  It is a machine.  What could go wrong?

www.cleanwaterman.com

Potassium Permanganate, Greensand Filter

I did an install this week for a customer who bought a greensand filter online.  This greensand filter will use potassium permanganate to recharge itself.

I do not sell greensand filters that regenerate with potassium permanganate because it is a dangerous chemical capable of strong reactions that can cause fire, especially when mixed with organic compounds such as antifreeze, oil, brake fluid, paint, and many other organic compounds.  This is a link to the material safety data on this product: http://www.hvchemical.com/msds/pope.htm

To have an idea how dangerous potassium permanganate is, please see this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcSEsazb56Q

What concerns me is that the Ohio based internet company did not even mention to their customer how dangerous this substance is before selling a system and shipping it out to Connecticut.  This is unethical and puts people who are not professional water treatment technicians in the position of handling extremely dangerous chemicals.

The same results could be achieved by natural methods, but after speaking to the homeowner, I found that these methods were not even offered.  Systems that use potassium permanganate should be maintained by a competent professional, not Joe Homeowner.

If you are in Connecticut and are considering a greensand system, please call me at 203-417-9601, or visit my website @ www.cleanwaterman.com

Slimy Soft Water!

Clean Water Man:

We just had a water softener installed last week and I can't stand the slimy feeling.  Why is it so slimy? Our water treatment company can't give us an answer.

June, Darien, CT

June:

This is where I wish companies that sold water treatment were more aware of everything that changes when a water system is installed and were also able to show you all the benefits, including slimy water.  Yes, I said slimy water is a benefit.

First of all, it will take you at least two weeks to get used to bathing in soft water.  The water itself is not slimy.  The sensation comes from three factors:

1. When you bathed in hard water, the calcium and magnesium combined with soap to clog the pores in your skin.  The clogged pores prevented natural oils from coming to the surface of your skin, natural oils that are there to keep your skin from drying out.  A water softener removes those clogging minerals and allows the oil to come out.
2. Soap lathers much better when there are no hard minerals grabbing onto the soap molecules.  The sensation of slipperiness is intensified with natural oil or tallow based soaps.
3. The slightly elevated sodium in the soft water combines with the now free oil on your skin and creates  the slippery feeling.  Believe it or not, soap actually rinses off more quickly and easily with soft water, but this combination of sodium and natural skin oils mimics the soapy feel (soap is usually some combination of some sodium, like sodium hydroxide, and fat, either vegetable oil or tallow).

 I ask all of my customer to give it two weeks and get used to the feeling and consider how much easier soft water is on their skin.  Also consider the fact that the water that people and animals have been exposed to for most of our existence is either surface water or shallow well and cistern water.  Bathing in and drinking deep well water is not truly our natural water habitat since most deep well water, compared to surface water, is very high in hard mineral content.  If for most of the past millions of years our ancestors were using surface water, which even in lakes and rivers has a naturally elevated sodium content due to natural erosion, isn't that the natural water our breed is used to?  The exception to this rule are hot springs throughout the world where bathing health spas have sprung up, but they are high in both calcium and sodium.  I suggest that our skin has been designed to deal more easily with water that has a low hardness level.

www.cleanwaterman.com