Monthly Archives: February 2008

Top Distributor Basket For Added Value

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Every so often, a call will come in from a recent customer who purchased a water softener or automatic filter system complaining that the media, which normally resides inside of the media tank, is coming out of the water faucets in the home. They wonder what is wrong with their brand new equipment. Well, nothing is wrong with the equipment. When replacing an existing softener or filter, it’s important to make note of the old system’s water flow direction. Often times the older equipment has a water flow direction that is the exact opposite of the new system. Inevitably, the newer water treatment system will end up connected backwards. The feed water will be connected to the outlet port and the inlet port will be connected to the downstream line.

What happens can be a nightmare. The water will flow backwards into the softener or auto-filter, running down through the distributor tube all the way to the bottom of the tank. It will come out of the distributor’s basket to flow upwards through the media invariably dragging much of it along up to the top of the tank and out of the control valve which will then run through the pipes and out of the faucets in the home. These faucets will become clogged with the media and eventually stop flowing completely. Worse, the media can end up inside of a water heater tank where it will settle on the bottom and become completely inaccessible. If it is water softener media beads, they can melt from the heat of the water heater’s burner and melt, potentially ruining the water heater. What a mess!

Upper distributor basket, just in case.For those reasons and more, Water Value Company is now including top distributor baskets with every water softener and automatic filter system we carry. The only exceptions will be softeners configured with the optional Turbulator, which already has an upper basket connected to it. These upper baskets will not be attached to the bottom of the control valve when they arrive at your home. You will need to insert them into the slots on the bottom of the control valve and twist it clockwise to seat them in place.

While these top distributor baskets are not necessary for 99% of the installations, it’s a good feeling to know that even if you make a mistake and plumb the water to your system backwards, this simple item could save you a great deal of grief should something go wrong. This is just one of the many reasons for choosing Water Value Company as your water treatment equipment supplier.

Iron Treatment and Removal With The Terminator

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The Terminator iron treatment system is a three stage system designed to remove iron, manganese, sulfur and turbidity from your well water. The processes included oxidation, gas separation and filtration with a blended media. This method of water treatment is not new. This method has been around for many years and is very reliable. Combine that reliability with professional grade equipment, and you have a proven, highly successful water treatment system. Consider too that while the final stage of the Terminator system is a backwashing filter, no regenerant or chemicals are required for operation. The mixed media bed has been proven to last from 5 to 15 years before changing, depending on the inlet water’s composition.

While the Terminator can handle large amounts if iron, sulfur and manganese, like anything else, it does have limitations. The Terminator will convert dissolved iron into suspended iron for easy filter removal. In other words, it can handle both Ferrous iron (dissolved) and Ferric iron (suspended), but it can only treat small amounts of bacterial iron. In the case of bacterial iron, chlorine should be added to the well water system periodically, or it can be automatically added with a chlorine pellet dropper. The Terminator systems can remove up to 20ppm (mg/L) of iron, 5ppm of sulfur and 125 F.T.U of turbidity. As mentioned above, the Terminator is a three stage water treatment system. They consist of an air injector, a mixing tank and a filter tank.

Typical Terminator installation configuration.

The Air Injector The air injector is typically placed between the underground well pump and the water system’s pressure tank. This air injector uses a nozzle/venturi action to draw air into the water in a fine vapor to provide maximum surface area contact with the water. The air injector requires the use of a submerged water well pump to provide enough flow rate for the air injector to work. An above ground “jet pump” is insufficient for proper operation. This air injector should also have a bypass mechanism plumbed around it. While not always necessary, a bypass can provide a higher degree of control of the amount of air injected into the water.

The Mixing Tank This tank and its internal and external mechanisms enhances the oxidation process by spraying the incoming water through a series of holes. It will also release and bleed off excess oxygen and sulfur gases.

The Filter Tank This tank contains the media which traps the now suspended iron. The control valve on the top of the tank will periodically backwash to release the trapped iron particles and send them down the drain. This backwashing process should occur every 3 to 4 days to keep the media bed redistributed.

Choosing Your Terminator System The size of Terminator system you choose will depend on water flow rates. You will need to consider your water system’s maximum flow rate to provide for a proper backwash to the filter media. The flow rates and backwash flow rates for the Terminator systems are provided in a table in the Terminator Service Manual. For example, if your water system currently has a flow rate of 5 gallons-per-minute (gpm), then either the T1000 or T1500 would work for you. However, if your flow rate is 5gpm, the T2000 would be too large as it requires a backwash flow rate of 7gpm.

The Terminator Service Manual also states that it comes with a Waterite air injector. At Water Value Company, we have had better performance with the more expensive Clack air injector, so when comparing prices on Terminator systems, be sure to make that consideration a part of your final decision.

Another consideration is your water’s pH balance. If your water’s pH is between 7.0 and 8.0, the standard Terminator blended media will work for you. If your water is low in pH (6.0 to 6.9), then the Terminator Plus blended media will perform better. Specify your water’s pH balance from the pull-down menu on the Terminator ordering page, and Water Value will include the proper blend of media for you.

Water Pitchers and Faucet Filters

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There are a number of national TV advertisements for water filtering pitchers and faucet filters. The faucet filters work by attaching to your sink faucet and diverting the water through a replaceable filter cartridge. The filtering pitchers require that you pour tap water into the top of the pitcher and gravity runs it through a replaceable filter element while the filtered water resides in the body of the pitcher.

These TV advertisements use visual tactics which pressure the consumer into thinking that their water could be dangerous to consume – which may or may not be true. For the most part, water in heavily populated industrial areas could indeed have numerous unsafe contaminants. But it is also true that many rural low-population areas can produce water which contains runoff from fertilizers and other chemicals. So the population in your location does not necessarily affect your water’s quality. Many municipal water treatment plants know exactly what is in the local water and they know exactly how to treat it. But it is still often desirable to remove some of the chemicals left over from the treatment process such as chlorine.

While these filtering pitchers and faucet filters do a good job, they are not very convenient or affordable to maintain. The proprietary filter cartridges and elements they use are simply activated carbon and possibly sediment filters. The same carbon and sediment filter elements are quite popular in higher volume and lower cost filter cartridges. These cartridges cost roughly the same as the faucet and pitcher elements, but they contain much more surface area, meaning they will process a lot more water between cartridge changes.

If you want to know what is in your water, check out our easy to use water testing kits.