Common Mistakes When Selecting a Water Treatment Option for Well Water

It is a known fact that water obtained from a well is not the best option when used for drinking or cooking purposes. It includes certain minerals and particles that can adversely affect your health, how your skin feels, staining on your fixtures, and more. Many professionals recommend water treatment options that purify your homes well water. The water analysis will help tell professionals which of the available water treatment options are best for your homes water. Water treatment options include the use of a water softener, iron filters, reverse osmosis, water purifiers, and water conditioning systems.

There are many of the different well water treatment options. However, selecting the right one can should be left up to professionals after an analysis of your water. Many people make some common mistakes when selecting a water treatment options for well water especially when they do not listen to the advice of water treatment professionals. These mistakes affects your homes water quality. Many common issues DIY homeowners forget to consider are:

Not Taking Impurities into Consideration

A very common mistake people make is that they do not take water impurities into consideration when selecting the water treatment option. There are different types of impurities in well water; hence, an appropriate treatment option must be selected considering those impurities. For example, if you are using an iron filter as a well water treatment, it won’t perform efficiently if the water is acidic in nature, which, generally, well water is.

Not Taking the Location of Well into Consideration

Many people opt for tried and tested water treatment options for well water without taking the location into consideration. This is an absolutely wrong approach as a well that is located in an area that has high pollution rate requires a different treatment method than that of an area with low pollution rate. Similarly, more chemicals, toxins, and impurities are found in the water that is obtained from wells located in an industrial area.

Not Having Ample Understanding of Pressure & Pump Flow Rate

It is another common mistake made by homeowners. They do not understand two important aspects of water system i.e. pressure and pump flow rate. As a result, they are unable to select the right treatment method for removing contaminations from the water. Therefore, it is recommended to have a deep understanding of these aspects along with others vital factors of the well water system so that you can select the most appropriate well water treatment option.

Wrongly Identifying or Not Identifying Well Water Problems

Some people go for a well water treatment simply because it is known to produce effective results. They make this mistake of not identifying the problems before selecting the solution. Similarly, some people wrongly identify the well water problem. The result, in such situations, is impure water that still contains harmful chemicals or toxins. Using this water for drinking or cooking purposes can lead to fatal health conditions.

At Reynolds Water Conditioning Company, we are here to help make sure our clients don’t buy water treatment systems that they don’t need. We are here to make sure you find a water softening system that gives you the results you are looking for, whether it is to remove iron or odor from you water; we have a solution that will help! For more information contact our experts at 800.572.9575 or at our website https://reynoldswater.com.

June 28, 2018

Whole House Vs Point of Use Water Filtration

Everyone wants water that tastes good in their home, but it can be tricky to determine what type of water filtration system to install to make it happen. After all, having great tasting water is not going to mean anything to you if the water in the rest of your house is cloudy and stains your clothing or other items that you are trying to keep clean.

Point of use home water filter systems will help you achieve fresh and crisp tasting water and these systems are installed underneath a sink or countertop. While point of use home water filter systems will deliver purified water for drinking and cooking, the amount of water that is purified each day might be less than you actually need.

Whole house water filtration systems will treat all the water that enters your home, which means that you will be using treated water for bathing, washing dishes, cleaning, and doing your laundry. These whole house water filtration systems can deliver thousands of gallons of water each day and the system would need to be placed where your water first enters your home. This could be in your garage or your basement, and since these systems are a little larger, you will need to make room for them. You would never need to worry about running out of clean water when you use a whole house water filtration system, but you should know that the quality of the water will not be as pure for drinking as it would be if you installed point of use home water filter systems in the rooms where you drink the water.

While either one of these options will give you better water, you may want to consider installing both inside your home. The whole house water filtration system will treat the water for your entire home, while additional treatment will be done to your water with the point of use home water filter system. This additional system will ensure that you have the best purified water for drinking and cooking purposes.

You may decide to install one or more of these systems due to personal preference of how water should taste, or you may choose to have them installed out of necessity. Red iron stains are one of the first clues that you need to seriously consider a whole house water filtration system, while an off taste might simply suggest a point of use home water filter system. If you are not sure if you need to install a water filtration system inside your home, you may want to have your water tested and talk to a professional of how these systems can make your water better.

June 21, 2018

The Best System For Your Home Drinking Water

There are different ways you can improve the quality of water in your home to make it safe for drinking and cooking as well as for other household applications such as cleaning, swimming, and more. Before you invest in a filtration system, conditioning system, water softener, or filtration system it’s important to have your water tested and checked for any harmful chemicals, heavy metals, volatile organic compounds, fluoride, or bacteria and also to determine the pH balance of your water.

Water that doesn’t fall within the safe pH range of 6.5 to 8.5 can be a sign of chemical or heavy metal pollution. You may want to test your water and install one of the following filtration systems, especially if your faucets and pipes have taken on a rusty red, white, or blue color. A professional water analysis is deemed to be the most important step in making sure that the correct water system is installed to bring your family quality water throughout your home.

Water Softener

Water softeners remove excess minerals or metals, such as calcium, magnesium, and iron found in hard water. By installing a water softener, you will not only notice a marked improvement in the way of minimal scale build-up in your sinks and bathtubs, but softening your water will also extend the life of your washing machine, dishwasher, water heater and various household appliances.

You also benefit from a cleaner plumbing system, and as a result, reduced energy consumption and utility bills. Whole-house water softeners are available in both reverse osmosis and ion-exchange options, however, there are also smaller systems that you can install only for your cooking and drinking purposes.

Ion Filter

There are several different kinds of ion filters, however, the best would definitely be one that has a double filtration system that can effectively adjust the ionization to the mineral content of the water. When you install an ion filter, your hard water goes through a process known as electrolysis, which separates it’s alkaline and acid content to make water safe for use. Although installed ion filters can be costly, they can be used with any water source, and most of them come with a lifespan of up to 30-years.

Reverse Osmosis

A reverse osmosis unit allows only the passage of water molecules, but not those of contaminants found in water. While it may not remove all contaminants, a reverse osmosis system provides several stages of removing impurities to make water safe for use. RO systems are also easy to maintain, and different varieties of these units can be tailored to fit your everyday usage.

June 7, 2018

What Water Treatment Option Is Best For The Water In My Home

Regardless of whether your homes water is supplied through public or private water treatment facilities, the purpose of improving the quality of drinking water is to make it safe to drink and use, palatable, and sufficient enough to serve your entire home’s needs. Point-of-use (POU) technologies such as water softeners and reverse osmosis devices are commonly used to treat contaminants before the water is deemed safe to drink. A POU device can either be attached to the main faucet, installed under the sink and can also be set on the counter for the purposes of reducing contaminants in drinking water or to enhance the aesthetic quality of water supplied by a local public drinking water system.

A Point of Entry (POE) device, on the other hand, is a unit such as the ion filter that is installed to treat the water entering a house also to reduce contaminants in the water distributed throughout home intended for showering, washing dishes, clothes, flushing toilets, etc. You ‘may’ not need a water treatment unit in your home if you live in an area where you receive your water from public water suppliers, that is if your PWS meets all the requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act. You still want to get your water tested first to determine if there are any contaminants present.

Individuals who have a private well also need to have their water tested for contaminants and use a home water treatment unit like an ion filter or water softener to lower any health-related contaminants and ensure that any water entering the house is safe for use. The reverse osmosis (RO) is a popular POU filtration unit with many homeowners because it removes impurities such as fluoride, lead, chlorine, pesticides nitrates, and sulfates. The ion filter system unit, on the other hand, provides both water softening and deionization water treatment option that removes every calcium or magnesium ion in hard water to produce soft contaminant-free water.

Reverse osmosis is, arguably, one of the most effective and efficient methods of treating and softening drinking and cooking water. It has an osmotic membrane chamber filled with tiny pores that only allows water molecules to pass through while contaminants such as calcium and magnesium are left behind as softened water is produced. To determine if any of the above water treatment options are suitable for your home ask for a professional water analysis.

May 31, 2018

Increasing Your Homes Water Quality by Installing a Water Filtration System

Health care experts advise people to drink at least 8 full 8 oz. glasses of plain water every day to stay hydrated. This is important because the human body is two-thirds water and without an adequate supply of fresh, clean drinking water your body will be at risk. Most homes in the United States are either hooked up to a municipal water source or localized well water.

Unfortunately, just because the water source is supposed to be safe and healthy to drink, there have been issues in the past whereas one or more of the water sources like a water well was contaminated. If this is a fear you have then there is something that you can do to prevent your family from drinking contaminated water without any knowledge that it is happening.

One solution would be to have a full house water filtration system or one that attaches to the faucet and filters the water before it comes out. Most water filtration systems work by having the water flow through some type of media material that is designed to trap even the tiniest of contaminants present in the water. There are several different types of water filtration systems and each one works in a unique way to clean the water and prevent you from being contaminated.

5 Different Types of Water Filtration Systems

Activated Carbon Filter Systems

Activated carbon filters or carbon filters for short work trapping suspended particles in the water and also helps to absorb chlorine and other chemicals that after often responsible for causing the smelly odor in your water that comes out of the faucet. Most of the systems that use these type of filters make it possible for them to be replaced periodically.

Reverse Osmosis Filter System

This filter system works by forcing the water under pressure through a membrane that will only allow water to pass through it and nothing else. This is also why RO is used to convert seawater (saltwater) into drinkable freshwater. The RO filter is usually part of a total water filtration system.

Alkaline/Water Ionizer

One of the more popular health kicks these days is alkaline water. One of the reasons is because is being reported that many of the most common illnesses thrive in acidic conditions. By drinking only alkaline water, you reduce the acidity level within your body you could help to possibly prevent one or more of them.

UV Filters

Ultraviolet filters are used specifically for killing dangerous bacteria when present in a water supply. By exposing the water to ultraviolet radiation any bacteria will be killed without having to use dangerous chemicals or heating up the water. This type of filter is also typically found as part of a multiple stage filtration system.

Infrared Filters

This type of filtration system combined heat and electricity to filter and soften the water by negatively charging the water to change its molecular structure. These type of filters work a lot like Alkaline and Water Ionizers.

May 16, 2018

Troubleshooting Your Homes Water Supply

No matter where your homes water comes from, a well, a spring, or the city, problems can exist. Individual water quality issues are fixed with distinct water treatment solutions. It is our job to help determine what solution will work best in treating and eliminating your homes water issue. From hardness to foul smells, we have a solution to bring you high quality water throughout your home. There are several issues that are commonly found in water throughout Michigan homes.

Common issues with your waters quality:

Hardness
Foul Odors and Taste
Mineral Buildup
Acidic
Arsenic

Hard Water:

Most often homeowners don’t know that they have hard water. What they do know is that there are spots on their glassware, laundry appears dingy, increased usage of soap, change in the texture of hair and skin, increased energy costs, and scale build up on faucets and such. Homes affected by a hard water supply have plumbing that tends to age quicker than those who seek to soften the water. The most common way to treat hard water in your homes water supply is with the installation of a high-quality water softener.

Foul Odors and Taste:

Foul odors and strange tasting water is something extremely noticeable to homeowners. Water can taste unpleasant metallic, chlorine, or can smell awful like rotten eggs, when this occurs one of the most common treatment options that is suggested is using an activated carbon filtration system. Backwashing carbon filtration systems are a combination of a large filter filled with activated carbon media. This removes foul tastes and odors from your whole house water supply leaving you with high quality water throughout the home.

Mineral Buildup:

Homeowners may not notice that they have an accumulation of minerals taking place within their water supply. The most common symptoms of a build up of iron and magnesium include unpleasant metal taste, staining, reddish tinted water, odors, and rust particles in the water. The treatment for a mineral buildup is the installation and usage of an iron filter system.

Acidic:

When the porcelain surfaces start to turn from white and ivory to green and blue green there is an issue with acidic water, low ph within the water. What this means is that your water supply has acid in it which is causing a corrosion of your pipes and plumbing fixtures. The fix for the issue of acidic water is with an acid neutralizer using Calcite.

Arsenic:

Arsenic is an element found naturally within ground water. Arsenic within your homes water supply can cause adverse health effects even in low concentrations as it is a carcinogen at high concentrations. In order to remove arsenic from your water supply homeowners should install an arsenic reduction system.

All water supplies need to be treated on an individual basis as symptoms can also be masked by other occurrences within the water supply. Free water analysis is done to diagnosis the issues that are found within your homes water to ensure that the treatment options is specific for your water needs.

May 11, 2018

Water Treatment Systems Improve Homeowners Drinking Water Quality

There are a variety of water purification systems that can be used to improve the quality of the drinking water throughout your home. To determine what type of water treatment system your home needs it is important to understand the qualities that each system offers in increasing water quality. Professional water analysis can be done on your homes water to provide you with a more accurate look into the actual issues plaguing your water supply, from rust to arsenic, your drinking water could be affected.

Using the right system to purify the water in your home can help to keep your family healthy. It is common knowledge that we need eight glasses of water or more each day to maintain personal health; purer, cleaner water dispensed from the faucets in your home help to increase the water that is consumed by your family daily.

There is a major difference between water softeners, conditioners, filtration systems and purification. It is important to understand that water purification solutions leave valuable minerals in your water supply while eliminating harmful elements that may not be seen or smelt. Hard water and smelly water issues are not solved with the installation of a purification system however common contaminants such as chlorine, cryptosporidium spores, giardia cysts, viruses, and pharmaceuticals are eliminated.

Not all water needs to be purified so it is crucial to understand the issues with your homes water before purchasing a water treatment system. Water purification systems go a long way in removing common contaminates that may alter your health. They can be installed so that they treat the entire supply of water throughout your home or specific areas where water is supplied.

Water softeners unlike water purification systems bring homeowners high quality drinking water by removing iron, rust, odor, sediment, and smells. Softeners remove the minerals that make the water hard. Some of the symptoms that your home could benefit from the use of a water softener is dry skins, smelly water, staining, and clogged plumbing. Water softeners are installed treating the homes entire water supply. Water softeners can use salt or potassium chloride using a process of ion exchange.

The water treatment option that is used to bring you quality water will be determined by your water analysis. There are times when a homes water supply will need more than one treatment solution to bring families quality water. Hard water can contain contaminants that a water softener will not remove thus a water purification or filtration system needs to be installed either at the point of entry (whole house) or point of use (faucet).

April 19, 2018

What Is the Best Type of Filtration System for the Water in Your Home?

Quality water throughout your home is immensely beneficial from a health perspective and therefore should be free of harmful containment’s before consumption or use. One way that this can be done is through the use of a whole house water filtration system. In order to be sure that you install the proper filtration device for the water coming into your home it is important to hire a professional water company to analyze your current water supply. The experts will then assist you in determining the system that is the most effective, most durable, and most affordable.

There are a number of factors to consider when looking to choose the right filtration system for your home. The primary factors that experts will be looking into are:

How effectively the filter system removes contaminants?
How advanced the contamination removal technology is?
How affordable the filtration system is?

Contaminants

Through research on contaminants and how filtration systems work homeowners can see how different filtration products are meant to filter out different types on contaminants. It is helpful for homeowners and water quality experts to identify the contaminants that are existent in the water before they move forward with the decision-making process. The water quality report is helpful in determining what kind of water is currently coming into your home. Once the contaminants inside the water are narrowed down, the filtration system choice will be narrowed down further.

Contamination Removal Technology

Most water filtration systems that are used to improve the quality of water coming into your home use similar technology. It is important that homeowners keep in mind that even though similar not all filtration technologies are created equally. Carbon filter systems, for example, come in different levels of effectiveness and generally remove contaminants like asbestos, Mercury, and chlorine from the water. Mechanical filters can assist in removing different types of sediment however will not influence chemical contaminates. Similarly, water softening units use ion exchange technology in order to lower the magnesium and calcium levels but do not have an effect on most other contaminants.

Affordability

As with any and all home improvements, cost is one of the primary determinants in the decision. Water conditioning companies, like Reynolds Water Conditioning, will present a variety of systems that meet the homeowners needs. The cost of filtration will vary significantly between filtration systems depending on the options the systems offer above and beyond the filtration benefits. Higher end filtration units may offer other benefits such as softening, purification, and conditioning therefore will be more expensive then systems that encompass only the filtration of the water in the home. If a whole house water filtration system proves to be too costly and under the sink water filtration unit is another option for quality drinking water.

April 12, 2018

Benefits of Point-Entry and Point-of-Use Water Systems

Safe drinking water is a concern to most homeowners. Even with existing laws and regulations in place that strive to ensure that everyone has access to clean water many homes have water supplies that are lacking in quality. Measures are often put into place, by homeowners, to increase the quality of the water coming into homes with extra attention being given to the filtration and purification of drinking water.

There are multiple water treatment systems that are available to homeowners, each with their own unique abilities to increase the quality of the water supply in your home. Two such systems include point of use and point of entry water treatment systems. Both types of systems are used to soften, condition, purify, or filter that water supply and can be installed for both residential and commercial use.

Using a Point Of Entry Water System

Point of entry water treatment systems connect directly to your homes water line. A water softener is one type of point of entry water treatment system. The water softener acts as a central filtration station for the water that is distributed to your entire home or office. Often a point of entry system is referred to as a whole-house solution for smelly water, hard water, or water with a high mineral count. These systems are used to remove bad tastes, foul odors, and contaminated before the water reaches your kitchen, bathroom, laundry, or irrigation systems.

Point Of Use System Differnces

On the other hand, a point of use system is installed directly at the source of water retrieval such as out door spickets, kitchen faucets, bathroom sinks, and showers. Most homeowners choose a point of use system in addition to a point of entry system. For instance, if your homes water has been found to have high levels of arsenic in it a point of use system arsenic removal system can be installed to prevent arsenic from entering your drinking water where as the water in your showers is fine to use even with low levels of arsenic. Point of use water treatment systems are often cheaper than point of entry systems as they are only being used to provide filtration to one source.

Benefits of Using Either Option For Water Treatment

There are multiple benefits that homeowners receive from using point of entry and point of use water treatment systems.

Point of use and point of entry filtration systems help keep your home safe from contaminants and chemicals that are found at the water source. Installing both systems will help ensure the water is free of contamination both from the source and just before it’s expelled from your tap.
A point of use filtration system can work well in isolation and it is an economical filtration system which can only be installed at a single water outlet.
When used together, point of use and point of entry systems can help ensure that you and your family have maximum protection from water contaminants which can cause illnesses. Adding a water softener into the system guarantees that your water is not just safe for consumptions but adequate for other use such as bathing and cleaning.

April 5, 2018

Water Softener vs Water Filtration

When it comes to treating the water that comes into your home we know that you have a lot of questions and concerns. With the number of options available in treating residential water quality it can become quite difficult to differentiate between the products available and their purpose. The question we get most often is regarding the difference between water filtration and water softening. In this installment we will look at the differences and how you know what the best option for your home is. Of course, as always FREE water analysis is available through Reynolds Water Conditioning Co; our experts will better be able to evaluate your need in person.

Let’s start by looking at what each system is and what it offers to the quality of water that you will end up with using each specific water treatment option.

Water Softeners

Water softeners are installed to soften the water within your home. They are designed to remove only that materials and containments within the water that create hard water including magnesium and calcium. Two general types of water softening units exist: water softeners that use salt to chemically modify the water and those that use potassium, otherwise known as salt-free water softeners.

Water Filtration

Water filtration is a general term used to describe many different options in removing contaminants from water including rust, iron, arsenic, copper, sediment, pesticides, and even hormones that enter water supplies through industrial or pharmaceutical waste. There are two types of systems to consider in water filtration: whole house filtration and point-of-use water filtration systems.

Although similar in nature you can see how each uses specific technology to improve the quality of water. What option(s) you choose will depend on your specific water quality. Some homeowners may find that even after they have installed a water filtration unit they are still left with hard water. The water quality may be better but still hard affecting their skin, appliances, clothing, and so forth. In this case the best option may be to install a whole house water softener with a point-of-use water filtration system to maximize your homes water quality.

Do You Have Issues With Your Water?

If you suspect issues with your homes water quality, does it smell bad, stain, or create residue build up, or have recently found out through a home inspection that the quality of the water entering your home is sub-par it is imperative that you reach out to the water quality experts at Reynolds Water Conditioning Company.