Monthly Archives: October 2007

How Do I Fix My Water?

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There are dozens of ways to treat problems in your water, and if you’ve ever browsed this web site, you’ll know that already. With the information we have published on our site, you’ll be able to choose the right treatment method(s) for you. But at last count, there are over 1800 web pages on this site and it would seem that while the answer to your water treatment needs exists somewhere in there, it could be difficult to find. You could use the search feature we have on the main index page, you can check the FAQ section, or you can simply browse every type of system we have and read about their attributes until you find the system that will work for your water condition.

With this article, we’ll try to make the decision process a bit easier. We’ll cover the most prevalent water conditions and their treatment methods for residential and light commercial applications. We’ll start with hardness.

All water contains levels of hardness. Hardness is lime and calcium which is picked up by water as it filters through the Earth’s surface down into an aquifer. Whether you are connected to a municipal water supply or getting your water from your own private well, this water has filtered down through the Earth and picked up hardness attributes. Water hardness can cause problems with plumbing and water using appliances. It can build up scale inside of water heaters, pipes and cause film and scale on water fixtures along with bath and shower doors and tile. It is difficult to remove completely with cleansers. Hardness can also greatly reduce the effectiveness of soaps and detergents. A simple water softener can exchange the calcium ions with sodium ions which do not adhere to surfaces as readily and are very easy to clean. It also gives your water a much better feeling on your skin while bathing, and it doubles the effectiveness of soaps and detergents.

A common misconception is that a water softener will fix all problems with your water. While they certainly do make improvements to the water, if there is a pH imbalance, a great deal of iron, odor in the water, bacteria or even turbidity, a standard softener will not help much. Iron can be reduced with a water softener, but iron filtration should be considered instead. Some forms of odor can be reduced with a softener, but some type of oxidizer system should be considered. Softeners do not filter or remove bacteria at all. Sediment, chlorine, fluoride, tannins and TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) are not reduced with a water softener. Softeners do remove most heavy radioactive metals from the water which is nice to know.

Iron problems with your well water? There are a few different types of iron which are described here. Different types of iron contamination are treated different ways. Bacterial iron is best treated with a chlorinator followed by some sort of activated carbon filtration. Ferrous iron or “clear water” iron is often associated with a rotten egg odor or hydrogen sulfide. This type of iron can be completely removed with a Terminator system, a manganese greensand filter or chlorination. Ferric iron or “red water” iron can be removed with the above mentioned methods, but if your water’s pH level and oxygen content are high enough, a simple Birm filter can take care of that. Bacterial iron can be detected when a glass of water is left sitting out for a while. A reddish slime buildup will form. Ultra-violet or chlorination are the best way to kill bacteria. Bacterial iron can also cause an odor which should not be confused with hydrogen sulfide odor. The best way to find out which odor you are detecting is to use a water testing kit.

Taste and odor is a popular term used to sell taste and odor filter cartridges, but this does not mean that these carbon filters will solve your taste and odor problem if it’s associated with hydrogen sulfide or bacteria. Again, a water testing kit is the best first step.

Taste and odor filters are best used for treating chlorinated water. The chlorine which is added to municipal water supplies to kill bacteria and algae, reacts with other elements in water to produce undesirable flavor and smell. Carbon filter cartridges, or better yet, whole house automatic filter systems take care of this problem very well. If you install a carbon filtration system up-line of your water softener, it can remove the chlorine in your water which will extend the lifetime of your softener’s media bed. If installed down-line of your softener, not only will it remove chlorine, it will remove any sodium residue left over from the softener’s regeneration process, which seems to be an important factor for people on low sodium diets.

Discoloration of your private well water can mean a number of problems. Iron, bacteria, tannin and manganese will cause water to be brown, red, gray or yellow. Turbidity will make your water appear milky, but so will high pH water. To determine if milky water is caused by turbidity or high pH, draw a clear glass of water and let it sit undisturbed for an hour. If the cloudiness clears up, it is a pH imbalance. If it’s still there or even settles to the bottom of the glass, you have a turbidity problem. Turbidity can be taken care of with fine sediment filtration. High pH is actually desirable to an extent, so leave it be unless your water comes out of the tap with large bubbles. Low pH will eat into copper pipes and cause leaks down the road. Low pH can make dark blue stains on porcelain and cause blond hair to change color. Low pH can be raised with a Calcite filter system.

Most water problems are treatable with one method or another, but many water problems are a combination of these symptoms. A single treatment method may not always be successful. For example, while a water softener is designed to remove hardness, it can also remove iron up to a certain concentration, but in many cases, a separate iron filtration system should be used. A combination of water symptoms can cause confusion, but if you test your water first, you will have a much better chance of determining the proper treatment methods for your water’s situation. Then treat the most problematic symptom first. Give priority to that symptom and often times, it will help to correct the other lesser symptoms as well.

Product Warranty

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Warranty information which pertains to all of our water treatment system products is located on the same web page that you would purchase that particular product from. We also maintain a very service oriented satisfaction policy which is available for review on every section of the web site. Our main goal is customer satisfaction, which we feel is even more important than profit – which is rare these days. If we end up going out of business because of customer dissatisfaction, then so be it. If our products are not of the absolute highest quality available, then we should not even be selling them. This approach has served us well over the last six years and we intend to stick with it.

Basically, we honor the same warranty as the manufacturer does and we act on behalf of the manufacturer for our customers. In most cases, the manufacturer warranty requires that the customer send in the faulty product for evaluation, repair or replacement. This process can take up to 30 days to complete. At Water Value Company, we have found that we can diagnose most problems via email and take the appropriate corrective action on the manufacturer’s behalf saving our customers time and money. Here are a few examples.

We are contacted by a customer who purchased a water softener system from us in 2003 which is still under warranty. The customer’s comment is “My softener is not working anymore”. After some questions and troubleshooting, we discovered that the compression fitting attached to the brine tank’s valve is leaking which prevents the salt saturated water from being drawn up into the softener’s media tank for regeneration. The customer was able to apply a wrench to the compression nut and all is well. Had this same customer contacted the manufacturer per their warranty process, he would have been required to send in the softener’s control valve for evaluation. Of course the manufacturer would have found nothing wrong with the control valve and shipped it back to the customer without immediate resolution. Eventually, the customer and the manufacturer would have figured out the actual problem and solution, but at the cost of a great deal of time and some shipping expenses not to mention frustration.

Another example that comes to mind involved another water softener. The system was purchased and installed in the customer’s garage less than one year ago. Everything worked fine until one day when he hit the softener system with his car. The base of the control valve was dislodged from the media tank and began to leak water. We were contacted about it and offered a simple solution; send the leaking control valve in and we will repair it at cost. While this was not a manufacturer’s defect, we can still solve problems for our customers without undue delay.

The important thing to remember is that we handle warranty issues and repairs for our customers only. There are thousands of water treatment equipment web sites out there and the majority of them handle the same equipment that we do. If you have a problem with one of their systems – no matter who manufactures it – you need to deal with them. Our customers are all issued a Water Value order number. If you need repairs or replacement performed on your equipment, simply contact us with the nature of your problem and include this order number. That order number is the best, most positive way for us to identify your equipment’s warranty. While we can look up your original purchase using your name or shipping address, there are several Johnson’s on Elmwood Road in this country.
We also receive many phone calls and emails from people who have purchased the same products we carry from another water treatment equipment dealer. These customers are frustrated because they are unable to attain support for their product from some of these other dealers. Be sure that when you are shopping for your next water treatment system, you can get support for it just in case something goes wrong. The prices for many of the systems we support may be a few dollars less elsewhere, but there’s usually a reason for that. If the other dealer does not offer after-sales support, they save money and can afford to sell their equipment for less.

Installation Notes

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More and more often as sales increase, we are asked about installation instructions. Surprisingly, this is most often after the equipment is received by the customer. If you are able to locate and purchase the water treatment equipment that you need, rest assured that you will be able to find setup and assembly instructions for it on the web site as well.

Installation instructions do not come with our water softeners and automatic filter systems. The service manual that is included with them is written and published by the manufacturer and for the most part deal with the control valves only. They will only generally tell you how to connect it to your water supply, and there’s a very good reason for this. Every installation situation is going to be different. There are different plumbing materials and different plumbing codes for different parts of the country. While the Fleck, Autotrol and Clack equipment we carry will always meet or exceed any local plumbing requirement, the method of connecting them to your water pipes may not. For instance, some locations still allow the draining of water softeners to the ground surface, but this is not allowed in most areas. It is recommended and in most cases required, that you run your water softener drain line to an approved drain pipe with an air-gap. But for this reason and many others, it is impractical to compose installation instructions that are universal.

For system and equipment assembly, we have detailed instructions with photos available on the web site and a link to that location on every section of the web site that this information pertains to. For instance, if you are purchasing a Fleck 7000 water softener, there is are assembly and setup links right next to the  “Buy” button. Another example is the Fleck 5600. Again, next to the “Buy” button there are links to the service manual, installation and assembly, specifications, configuration and options information and on that particular model, highly detailed assembly and hook up information.

For the rest of the water treatment equipment we sell, the manufacturer’s installation instructions should be used. Products such as chlorinators, UV filters and reverse osmosis systems come with complete and detailed instructions. If you do not understand something or need clarification with these instructions, please do not hesitate to contact us. All of the products we carry have been thoroughly tested and evaluated by us, and often times used by us.

But if you have questions pertaining to your specific plumbing configuration – while we do employ a master plumber for our area – please contact a plumber local to you. While we may have a great deal of experience “hooking up” our equipment in the West Michigan area, we cannot keep track of the various plumbing codes throughout the country.

In the same regard, even though Water Value Company cannot maintain a database of plumbing codes throughout the U.S., the manufacturer of the water treatment equipment does, and you can rest assured that the equipment we sell here will meet or exceed any local water treatment equipment requirements.

Shipping To Canada?

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This is by far the most often asked question this past weekend. Now that the Canadian dollar is equal to or stronger than the US dollar, it makes more and more sense for Canadians to purchase from US web sites.

It should be noted here that the manufacturers of our water treatment products are all based in the US. This means that any Canadian water treatment dealers will also be enjoying the better pricing now available to them and if you are in Canada, you should probably contact them first for updated pricing before ordering from the states. When water treatment equipment is sent from here to Canada, there is a duty fee charged at the border which you will be responsible for. This fee is based on the value of the product(s). Depending on what you order, it can amount to hundreds of dollars. If your local Canadian water treatment dealer is charging hundreds of dollars more than us, this is probably why.

In order to accurately quote shipping to Canada, we will need to know what product(s) you are considering and your postal code. Many of our water treatment systems ship in multiple boxes with varying dimensions which UPS will need to know. Also, the shipping distance makes a big difference so your postal code is important. Simply contact us with your request and we can usually have an answer to you inside of a day.