The "Water Dream" Depth Filter

Depth Filter, Multi Layer Filter, there are all sorts of names for these One Filter Fixes All systems sold almost exclusively on the internet.  These filters are a rip off and you should avoid them.  This week's debacle was at a home where one of these was installed as a downflow filter.  It had "layers" of different sized mesh coconut carbon, bituminous coal, pumice, KDF, and other materials.  First of all, these units are shipped already filled, with the heaviest media (KDF) on the top of all the other medias.  You can be positive that with shipping vibrations, the KDF works its way down through the other medias even though it is supposed to be on top.  It is two to four times denser than the other medias.

If it were possible for the product to be shipped without the six different layers jumbling and mixing, there is a bigger issue.  There is not enough of any of the medias to be truly effective for whatever that media's job was supposed to be.  There are only somewhere between four and six inches of each media in the filter, and that does not leave enough contact time to get any job done.  And when they de-stratify and mix, there is not effective contact because the water finds it's way around the easier granules to flow through and around and will therefore miss some of the media.

The product design is truly built around a poor business model - the desire to sell something, anything, on the magic internet.  "How about a water filter!  Oh, but what about the fact that every home has its individual water issue and someone right there would be better able to help the customer?  No matter, just throw a little of anything we can think of in the filter, and ship it off.  What a great idea!"  Not really.

The customer in this case needed a neutralizer.  There were no neutralizing minerals or medias in this "do everything" filter, and therefore, after spending over $1000.00 on it, the customer found that it didn't work.  I removed it and installed a neutralizer with 40" of calcite media, plenty to do the job that needed to be done.

There are no do everything filters for water treatment.  I use several catalogs with hundreds of pages each of components and medias and controllers so that I can put together the best systems for my customers.  Anyone selling you something that claims to do everything is just stealing your money.  Run the other way.

Clean Water Man, Inc. Earns Esteemed 2013 Angie’s List Super Service Award

Clean Water Man, Inc. Earns Esteemed 2013 Angie’s List Super Service Award
 

Award reflects company’s consistently high level of customer service

Clean Water Man, Inc. has earned the service industry’s coveted Angie’s List Super Service Award, reflecting an exemplary year of service provided to members of the consumer review service in 2013.

"We are happy to work with Angie's list since their subscribers are our most educated and best clients," says Ted Mullen, President of Clean Water Man, Inc.

“Only about 5 percent of the companies Company Name competes with in Connecticut are able to earn our Super Service Award,” said Angie’s List Founder Angie Hicks. “It’s a mark of consistently great customer service.”

Angie’s List Super Service Award 2013 winners have met strict eligibility requirements, which include an “A” rating in overall grade, recent grade, and review period grade; the company must be in good standing with Angie’s List, have a fully complete profile, pass a background check and abide by Angie’s List operational guidelines.

Service company ratings are updated daily on Angie’s List. Companies are graded on an A through F scale in areas ranging from price to professionalism to punctuality. Members can find the 2013 Super Service Award logo next to company names in search results on AngiesList.com.

Angie's List helps consumers have happy transactions with local service professionals in more than 720 categories of service, ranging from home improvement to healthcare. More than 2 million paid households use Angie's List to gain access to local ratings, exclusive discounts, the Angie’s List Magazine and the Angie's List complaint resolution service.

Brining, What Is It? (Water Softeners)

Brining is part of the "regeneration" process for a water softener.  Regeneration is needed because your water softener can only remove a specific amount of hardness, iron, manganese, radium, and several other minerals.  The process removes the undesired minerals from the softener and replaces them with sodium.

A water softener uses a media called softening resin, which consists of thousands of tiny polystyrene (non expanded) beads that are created to hold on to certain ions of minerals.  When the water softener is new, it is filled with fresh resin which has been pre-charged with sodium ions.  The water softener is the tank portion of the system, where the controller is attached (on top).  The brine vat is the portion next to the softener where you add salt, and is NOT the softener.  A water softener does not pump salt in the water to be distributed throughout the home, the water softener only uses the salt to clean and regenerate, and the only portion of the salt that gets into the water is the sodium portion.  The chloride portion is rinsed away with the undesired mineral ions.

Depending on the brand and model of your water softener, some water is put into the brine vat during either the beginning of the cycle or the end of the cycle.  The water dissolves some of the salt in the brine vat and creates a brine solution of approximately 35% salt.  With the use of a venturi (common) or brine pump (common with industrial applications), the salt is brought into the softener and through the resin.  The sodium ions overpower the undesired minerals and knock them into the waste stream and out of the softener.  The softener will rinse excess salt and all the chloride out into the waste stream and the water softener is now recharged.

See our products and services at www.cleanwaterman.com

What Does It Do? Blue Frog brand City Slicker Fluoride Reduction Softening System

The Blue Frog brand City Slicker Fluoride Reduction and Softening system.  A compact water system that provides both fluoride / chlorine reduction and softening.  Lowers your exposure to fluoride / chlorine that comes from exposure of your skin while bathing and lowers exposure caused by breathing aerated fluoride / chlorine in hot showers.  Also provides luxurious soft water which is gentle for your skin and hair while making your water heater, dishwasher, and clothes washer more efficient and effective.

Utilizes Danbury Manufacturing Inc.'s exclusive E-1 valve, bone char media for fluoride / chlorine and VOC reduction, and North American sourced softening resin.  Compact brine vat for space saving.

The E-1 control valve is easy to program with an intuitive, menu based screen.  There are no irritating "secret code" lockouts that make other brands so difficult to use for both customers and installers.  The water flow surfaces are sapphire ceramic discs which do not scratch or wear out.

Water metering and up-flow brining make the system efficient and salt usage will minimum.

This system is designed for people who believe that reducing their exposure to fluoride is beneficial.  I do not make any claims about the health benefits of risks of fluoride but I can tell you that this City Slicker, along with a reverse osmosis drinking water system are what I rely on to lower my exposure to many chemicals in the municipal water that comes into my home.

Clean Water Man, Inc of Danbury, 

Connecticut has received the Angies 

List 2013 Super Service Award!

What does it do? A natural mineral water neutralizer.

A natural mineral water neutralizer is a safe and simple method to increase the pH of acidic water.  The tank contains a mineral called calcite which is granulated marble, and in extreme cases, another mineral called magnesium oxide is blended in.  When water passes through the calcite, if it is acidic (a pH reading of below 7), the calcite dissolves into the water and raises the pH to 7.  On a yearly basis (for most installations) a technician will need to add more calcite to the filter to replace what has dissolved.

There are many in my industry who will claim that some very acidic water can only be treated with harsh chemicals such as sodium hydroxide (lye) or potassium hydroxide (almost as bad as lye) or some other caustic substance.  They do not know what they are doing.  If they tell you that the job can not be done without these chemicals, please kick them out of your home, because what they are proposing is to inject skin destroying chemicals into your water to an extent that certain malfunctions could cause anyone bathing in or drinking that water to be severely injured.  Anyone proposing the use of these chemicals can not truly have the customer's best interests in mind.  Do not allow chemical injection systems utilizing caustics to be installed in your home.

They will still insist that chemicals are the way to go, but anyone who says that has been too lazy or set in their ways to discover why they think the natural ways don't work.  It is simple.  They have used inferior materials in the neutralizers they have used, or they had no idea of how to add magnesium oxide to the system, and mainly, it is a combination of the two.

First, the only calcite that should be used is one of the quality of Imerys calcite, a pure white crushed Georgia marble.  Most newbies or un-inquisitive old timers fall into the trap of using whatever "calcite" the local plumbing supply house carries.  Unfortunately, what most plumbing supply houses carry is not calcite but instead LIMESTONE.  Limestone is up to 15% non dissolvable solids, which, as you would guess, reduces the effectiveness of a NEW system by 15%.  And as the years go by and new limestone is added on top of the leftovers, you can get to a point where 50% or more of what is in the tank is no longer an active pH raiser, but simply granulated rock.  And with neutralizers being installed in basements, it is unlikely that your technician is going to want to single handedly drag the four or six hundred pound beast out of the home, tip out all of the old limestone, and refill it with fresh product.  Or, if the technician is adventerous, he will load gobs of magnesium oxide on top of the useless limestone, instead of blending it with the calcite like it needs, and that mineral ends up as a solid ball so hard that water does not penetrate it and dissolve it, nor can it be removed from the tank if the technician decides to rebed the system.  So they learn, calcite neutralizers don't work (which is true the way they use them).

And now, why have we gotten to this rant today?  I have spent the last two weeks recovering from lye burns on my knees.  I knelt in a crawl space to help a customer repair a feed pump and the previous contractor spilled sodium hydroxide on the floor in a way that it could not be seen.  What if it was the customer?  His child?  It could have been much worse since I was able to figure out what was happening to me and remove my clothes and rinse off my knees before it got worse and someone else may not have figured it out.  

Here is an example of a high quality backwashing calcite neutralizer sold through my company and built by Danbury Manufacturing Inc. under the Blue Frog brand.

It also does double duty as a backwashing sediment filter.

cleanwaterman.com