May
12
Hardness in water is quite easy to remove. A simple ion exchange water softener takes care of all but the most extreme levels of hardness content. One other thing that a softener does it remove or reduce certain types of iron as well. For low levels of specific types of iron, a water softener works quite well, but when the iron content is high or if the iron is not the right type, then a water softener will not do the job. In order to treat iron effectively, it is important to identify which type of iron your water might contain.
FERRIC IRON: This type of iron cannot effectively be removed with a conventional water softener. It will foul the softener’s resin media in a relatively short period of time. Ferric iron can be easily identified in water. The water will appear to have a reddish orange tint to it. This is oxidized iron and will stick to plumbing fixtures, pipes and stain laundry. Mechanical filtration such as a Birm filter or greensand filter are effective.
FERROUS IRON: This type of iron can be effectively removed with an ion exchange water softener so long as the concentration of ferrous iron is not over 3 parts-per-million (ppm or mg/L). This type of iron exists in water with a low oxygen content. If you were to fill a drinking glass with this type of water and leave it sit out all day, it would oxidize and the iron particles would accumulate on the bottom. Chlorination at the well, an ion exchange softener, a Terminator system, Sentry I Open Air System or a greensand filter will work on ferrous iron.
SEQUESTERED IRON: Often called Iron Bacteria, is able to pass through conventional softeners and other iron specific filtration systems. Because it can be broken down when heated, this type of iron is more noticeable in hot water. The best way to deal with iron bacteria is to prevent it from getting into the water system. Well chlorinators are very effective here such as the WellPro chlorinator or the Sentry I Open Air System.
HEME IRON: is most likely found in surface water. Standard iron removal equipment are usually ineffective at treating this type of water. Treating heme iron as tannins is standard practice. A water softener with a mixture of standard cation resin and anion resin is effective.
Jan
18
Sediment Filter Cartridge Types and Materials
January 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment
There are three basic materials used in the various sediment filters that we carry at Water Value Co. While all three materials achieve the same results - removing sediment from the water - each material has its own characteristics.
Melt-Blown Spun Polypropylene: This sediment filter material uses a graded density to trap sediment particles. Larger particals of sediment entering the filter will be trapped on the outside of the filter media while the smaller particles become trapped deeper inside the filter cartridge. This graded density method greatly increases the effective surface area of the filter cartridge which prolongs the useful life of the cartridge itself. Melt-Blown Spun Polypropylene filters ratings begin at 25 microns on down to 1 micron.
Wound Poly Cord: The idea behind the spun cord sediment filter cartridge is cost. This type of filter cartridge is much less costly to manufacture than any other method. As the name implies, this is simply a polypropylene cord wound around a rigid core. The poly string material is also more resistant to corrosive fluid and materials that the other two types of sediment filter material. These filter cartridges rate at 30 micron on down to 5 micron.
Pleated Polyester: Pleated filter cartridges use a non-woven polyester material that is folded into pleats around a solid core. This pleating characteristic greatly increases the surface area of the filter cartride. The unique characteristic of this type of sediment filter is the fact that it is reusable. You can remove the trapped sediment particles from the inside folds of the pleats and put it back into service several times. This material ranges from 50 microns on down to 1 micron.
Nov
30
Toilet Stains
November 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Many people will contact us about iron stains from their well water left on their bathtubs, showers, toilets and sinks. This iron can also discolor laundered clothing after time. There are several very good methods for removing iron from your water. There is a simple Birm filter if certain conditions of the water can be met, such as a high pH level and no presence of hydrogen sulfide gas. Then there is the Greensand filter method which not only removes iron, but it takes care of manganese and hydrogen sulfide gas. Chlorination will oxidize iron out when combined with a carbon filter. The Terminator iron systems use a 3 stage action which injects air into the water, then bleeds off the air and any gases then finally filters out the now oxidized iron particles. Finally - and without doubt the best method for treating iron - the Sentry I Open Air systems can handle very bad water with very satisfying results.
So customers will choose one of these iron systems, install it and see the huge improvement in their water quality. The stains are gone from the laundry, sinks, tubs and showers too! But they end up calling to complain that their toillet still has a black or gray or even reddish-pink stain around the bowel only a few days after cleaning it. Well, it’s not just the well water customers that call about this type of staining, it’s also the city water customers. Naturally, the first thing one would think if there is a reoccurring stain in their freshly cleaned toilet, that something must be wrong with the water. But after some investigation, we found that this stain is not caused by anything in the water. Rather it is introduced into the toilet through the air.
These stains are caused by an airborne spore. The name of the spore is known by some in the scientific community, but it is unknown to me. Suffice to say that it is hard to pronounce and comes in various strains, which would explain why the colors of the growth can be varied. It is microscopic, floats in the air, and the waterline in a clean toilet is the perfect place for it to settle and grow. Actually, bad water will help to keep it away. Once you’ve solved a bad water problem such as iron, this mold will grow more quickly due to the fresh, clean water. There is no known method to preventing this spore from seeking out and finding the ideal living conditions in a toilet.
Before I go on, I should point out that this experiment I’m about to mention is not very scientific. It’s just that these calls were bothering us and upon reading some material, we decided to give this excersize a try. One of our houses has 2 bathrooms, both with the dark stains around the water lines of the toilets. This water is highly treated as you can imagine, being a water treatment equipment professional’s home. So we decided this would be worth a try. First, we cleaned both toilets at the same time. We then sealed off the bowel of one of the toilets (the one not used very often) with common plastic wrap, stretched and tied in place. The idea here was to make that bowl air tight. After only a few days, the uncovered toilet bowl started showing signs of this growth at the water line. The sealed toilet did not. After one week, the open toilet was looking pretty bad. The sealed toilet showed no signs of staining. Okay, this was not a laboratory and nothing was officially documented, but the experiment satisfied us enough to be able to say with confidence that the stains in this case were probably cause by something in the air.
The point of this message is to simply help lay to rest the beleif that not everything that causes stains in toilet bowl water lines is iron, or even something in the water. There is a very good chance that if you have treated your water for iron/rust stains and your other plumbing fixtures have cleaned up while the toilet still produces stains, it’s probably these spores that are the cause.
Nov
10
Water Softener Sale
November 10, 2008 | 1 Comment
We have select sizes of the Water Value WS-1 Clack controlled water softeners on sale until the end of the month. These electronic, turbine metered, on-demand complete water softener systems feature easy and automatic setup along with high flow rates and high efficiency. These professional grade systems - once only available to water treatment professionals - are now available to the public.
The Water Value WS-1 water softener systems feature high flow rates, electronic turbine metering, high salt efficiency, LCD display, easy initial setup, FREE installation kit, high capacity ion exchange resin, Structural tanks, brine grid, bypass valve, drain line and more. Everything you need to connect to your existing plumbing. There are a number of options you can choose from as well including pipe connector size (free installation kit is 3/4-inch NPT), optional tank jacket and brine tank colors. The sizes included in this sale are the 24,000 grain, 32,000 grain, 40,000 grain and the 48,000 grain capacity. To find out which size works best for your application, use our handy Softener Sizing chart.
This sale ends November 30, 2008.
Oct
15
Bottled Water vs Tap Water
October 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Yet another reason to stop buying the plastic bottles. The Associated Press article “Bottled Water vs Tap Water” published on 10/14/2008, lists a number of contaminants in numerous samples of commercially available bottled water. Basically, the article states there is no health benefit to drinking bottled water over tap water. The contaminants in the bottled water are within EPA standards, so it is certainly not dangerous, but there is no benefit to plastic bottled water over tap water.
If you desire contaminant-free drinking water, the two ways to go are distillation and reverse osmsosis. While distillation is expensive to operate and not practical for most point-of-use applications, reverse osmosis is. When landfill requirements, purity issues and expense are taken into consideration, it makes little sense to buy bottled water.
Oct
6
Solving Well Water Problems
October 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Private wells can present quite a few problems for homeowners and businesses alike. All water out of an underground well contains some degree of hardness. But hardness is easily removed with a standard water softener. Most wells also produce water with some type of iron contamination. While iron in your water is not considered a health risk according to the US EPA under certain amounts, it can cause many problems with staining of plumbing and fixtures, laundry and often times produces an unpleasant odor. Water Value Company has an excellent iron elimination system available called The Terminator. Using 3 stages of water treatment, it injects oxygen into the water as the well pump runs. It then oxidizes and bleeds off excess air and sulfur gas, and finally filters out the oxidized iron through an automatic backwashing filter system. The Terminator system is very effective in removing high amounts of iron, manganese and hydrogen sulfide.
But often times well water will not only contain iron and odor, but bacteria also. Bacteria can be killed with UV filter lamps and chlorinators, but BWI (Better Water Industries) has come out with an ingenious all-in-one device for treating not only bacteria, but iron, sulfur, sulfate reducing bacteria, black manganese, algae, tannins, arsenic and even low pH. It is the Sentry I Open-Air System and it even increases low level well water output. 
While being ideal for removing very high levels of iron and sulfur gas from your water, the other benefits of this open-air system coupled with a standard water softener downline of the appliance makes for nearly perfect water right out of your tap, no matter how difficult your well water problem may be. The simple design of this open-air system means easy installation. It comes pre-wired and plumbed with a 1-inch inlet valve, adjustable air-draw for oxidation, safety floats, dry pellet chlorinator, submersible pump, and bladder tank. Water enters the Sentry I Open-Air system and is injected with air for oxidation, chlorine for oxidation and disinfection, holding tank and a booster pump to provide higher water pressure to your faucets than a standard well system can.
So if you need to solve multiple problems with your well water and require a simple to use, low maintenance water treatment equipment solution, the Sentry I Open-Air System is the right choice.
Sep
3
Brine Tank Overflow
September 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment
A widely common problem people have with their water softeners is too much water going back to the brine tank after regeneration. This can happen with a 15 year old softener or a brand new one. There is likely only one cause; a leak somewhere. Finding that leak is the trick. So if you’ve searched and found this article, you have a problem with your softener’s brine tank over filling. Therefore, you do not want to have to read through the mechanics of the brine system of your water softener, you just want to fix it. So I will try to get right to the point here.
First of all, if your water softener is brand new, the leak is not caused by your brand new control valve. Do not bother to call whomever you purchased it from and demand a warranty replacement. You will still have the same problem with a brand new controller. The leak is likely in the line leading from the control valve to the brine tank. There are only two fittings in this line, so check both of those. Even the plastic fitting inside the brine tank’s brine well needs to be “wrench tight” not finger tight.
If your water softener is older, say 2 or 3 years, then it’s likely you need to clean the brine injector assembly and the air-check at the bottom of the brine tank’s brine well. The brine well is a large diameter tube that runs down the inside of the brine tank. The air-check will be in the bottom of that. If you have an Autotrol model 255 control valve, you will not have an air-check in the brine tank, but there will be a brine pickup there which should be checked and cleaned of any debris if necessary.
The air-check is simply a plastic ball in the bottom of a serrated tube. The ball closes off the backflow of brine water out of the brine tank. In other words, the control valve does not “know” when the brine tank is empty. This air-check mechanism takes care of sealing off flow from the brine tank. If it does not seat properly, there will be a vacuum leak. The service manuals of all makes and models of water softeners we carry deal directly with cleaning of these air-checks and brine injectors. After making sure the brine line is not leaking, the air-check and brine injector are the next items to focus your attention. They should be clean of any brine or debris buildup.
Finally, all water softeners sold by Water Value come with a safety overflow float assembly. If yours has a leak where the brine pickup tube connects to the safety float shutoff, you will eventually end up with an overfilled brine tank. If the safety shutoff valve itself is leaking, you will also end up with an overflowing brine tank. Check that pickup tube and float assembly for leaks. A very easy way to do this is to activated your safety shutoff valve when the water softener is in brine refill mode. Simply pull up on the float assembly rod to activate the shutoff. If you see water dripping out, then you have a shutoff valve leak.
If a control valve has a brine draw cycle time of 8 minutes, and there is a vacuum leak somewhere in the brining system, that 8 minutes might not be long enough to draw all of the brine water out of the tank and into the softener’s resin bed for regeneration, leaving some brine in the brine tank. Then when the control valve reaches its final brine refill cycle, it will run for 8 minutes to replace the water it initially drew up out of the brine tank. If the brine tank still has water inside because of the vacuum leak, too much water will be sent to the brine tank. This is what causes brine tank overflow. It’s also possible that it could take several regenerations over several weeks time to realize this condition.
The preventive maintenance section that comes with these softener systems’ service manuals explains how to clean your specific brine valve and air-check. Do this brine system cleaning once per year, and you should never have brine tank overflow problems again.
Aug
6
Cost For Activated Carbon Goes Up
August 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment
The cost of granular activated carbon for water treatment has tripled in the last few months. There are all kinds of speculation as to why but in fact, there are a few reasons. These price increases currently affect automatic backwashing carbon filter systems and will no doubt start showing up soon in the manufactured cartridge filters.
Up until a couple of years ago, the vast majority of activated carbon coming into the U.S. was manufactured in China. For various reasons, the U.S. government wisely assessed and enforced import fees on this popular filter media. Water Value was already incorporating U.S. made carbon media in its systems all along, but when the Chinese media was no longer practical to purchase due to the increased cost, the other water treatment companies were forced to buy U.S. carbon. Because their prices went up and ours did not, we even went so far as to upgrade our carbon media to a nationally known name brand manufacturer in place of the generic U.S. media we were using.
We are still using that name brand carbon in our automatic filters, but the cost has risen above what anyone in the business had anticipated. A great deal of this can be attributed to the cost of oil for sure. While oil is not directly used in the manufacture and processing of activated carbon, producing the heat required is. It will either come from electrical or gas energy.
Rest assured that any of the activated carbon systems/products you purchase from Water Value have, and always will contain the highest grade of media available and it’s certainly made in the U.S.A.
Aug
4
Water Pitchers Saving the Environment
August 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I really like the new commercial about the filter-style water pitchers. They show a person doing some sort of activity such as treadmill running or even reading a book. In all cases, the person is accompanied by a plastic bottle of water. The commercial displays the line “20 minutes on a treadmill (or whatever the activity is): forever in a landfill”. The “forever in a landfill” is of course referring to the plastic water bottle.
We have addressed this issue of the plastic water bottles in the recent past. Our solution to the problem might be a bit more expensive than a filtering pitcher, but it’s much more practical.
Today, everyone knows how important it is to keep hydrated either while exercising or even at rest. Water helps to clean out the toxins in your body, and especially today, there are plenty of toxins in our environment. But the use and waste of these plastic bottles is going to catch up with us quickly. Either re-using the bottle or choosing an alternate, washable container is the right thing to do.
Keeping the water as clean and fresh as the bottled water factories do is easy too. Reverse osmosis is the single most effective, efficient and economical method of purifying your tap water available today. And it’s also orders of magnitude cleaner than any pitcher filter.
Jul
28
Do You Need Water Treatment?
July 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
In most cases throughout the U.S., the answer to the above question is yes. In some cases though, and so long as there are no health issues with your water, water treatment is not needed. Because all water eventually filters down through several layers of minerals until an aquifer is reached, due to the solvent nature of water, it is going to gather minerals such as calcium along the way. When this aquifer is tapped either by a private well or municipal water distribution facility, the hardness minerals come right along with it. This calcium or lime can cause problems with your water pipes due to deposits on the inside walls of the pipes and plumbing fixtures over the years. The hardness also requires higher levels of soap and detergent to produce suds and lather when bathing or washing laundry and cookware. This calcium in the water poses no threat to health, but no benefit either. It is not the type of calcium that can be absorbed into your blood stream such as the calcium your body gets from food or vitamins. But it sure can be annoying when it comes to plumbing fixtures, washing and deposits left on surfaces such as a shower door or bathtub. If these annoyances do not cause you any bother, and there are no other contaminant issues with your water, you will not require any sort of water treatment.
Chances are though, if you’re reading this, you’ve decided that you do require some sort of water treatment. Once you know what is in your water that is causing the problems, it’s easy to figure out what you need. The best way to determine the nature of the contaminants in your water is to test the water. Simply pick up a water test kit at your local hardware/plumbing supply store or even get one of our Complete Home Water testing kits. There are 2 tests for every kind of water problem common to drinking water. There’s even a single test for bacterial infection.
Now that you know how much of what is in your water, you have come to the right place. Hardness, iron, bacteria, chlorine, fluoride, nitrates/nitrites, copper, taste and oder can all be treated easily with one or two devices. Hardness (and even some iron) can be treated with a regular ion exchange water softener. Iron in its many forms can be treated with one of our iron filter systems or chlorination. Turbidity is normally treated with a sediment filter, chlorine with a carbon filter, and even pH can be raised with a Calcite filter system. Nearly all chemical contaminants in the drinking water can be removed with a reverse osmosis system.
Some water treatment devices might require a pre-treatment method for proper operation. For example, reverse osmosis systems require a hardness level of less than 10 grains per gallon to operate properly. If your water hardness is over 10 grains per gallon and you require reverse osmosis treatment, you will also need to add a softener to your water treatment system.
If you cannot find what you’re looking for, try searching this web site. We take every question we have been asked over the phone for the past 7 years and addressed them in a search-able format. Simply type in your question at the “search this site” box in the left side of this page.