I’m a do-it-yourselfer. There, I said it! I’ll bet a lot of you are too. And I’m usually pretty good at it. One of my daughter’s elementary school friends once told her parents that “Steve Guercia can fix anything”. However, I won’t take on everything. My rule of thumb is to ask “What will happen if I make this worse?” because sometimes we do-it-yourselfers do make things worse. If I try to fix the dryer and make it worse, we go the laundromat. If I try to fix the dishwasher and make it worse, we wash the dishes by hand. If I try to fix the boiler and make it worse, we go to a hotel. So I won’t try fixing the boiler.

While on call this weekend, I received two calls from do-it-yourselfers that made things worse. One of them tried to change an ultra violet light lamp that disinfected their water. He damaged another part in the unit and ended up with water that was not safe to drink. The other took his softener control head apart so he could manually regenerate it because the manual control was broken. He also damaged another part and had to tolerate high iron water until we could fix or replace the valve, which will cost many hundreds of dollars at the least.

In general, do-it-yourselfers should stay away from water treatment equipment. The consequence of failure is just too high. I’ll talk about this further in our next e-newsletter.  Click on “The Water Break” to subscribe to our e-newsletter.

Thank you!

Steve

Like most things mechanical, Radon Water Systems require regular Annual Maintenance. If you live on a well in New Hampshire there is a good chance that you have a Radon Water Treatment System. If you are treating for Radon water levels over 5000 pCi/l there is a very strong likelihood that you have an Air-stripper. For more information on Radon in Water, and Radon Air-strippers please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com

Radon Air-strippers blow filtered air through water. The water is usually at atmospheric pressure and must be re-pressurized before sending it off to the homes distribution system. Although many Air-stripper have high quality air intake filters and hepa filters it is still possible for air-borne Bacteria to enter the water stream. To control the growth of Bacteria, it would be optimal if everyone would follow their Air-stripper with a Chlorinator or an Ultra Violet light sterilization system. Unfortunately, the cost of Radon Air-strippers is considered so high that adding on a Sterilization step afterwards is usually cost prohibitive. So what to do?

Have your system professionally sterilized on an Annual basis! This will keep Air-Borne bacteria from getting out of control. The last thing that you want is to have Bio Slime forming in the Air-stripper. Not only is it disgusting, it will actually plug up the holes in the Air-stripper over time affecting it’s Radon reduction efficiency.

In addition to Sterilizing the Air-stripper and checking all of it’s Mechanical functions, it is also important to have the Solenoids checked for bleed-through. Usually the Solenoids do not suffer from catastrophic failure, all at once. They start out by leaking  just a little bit. The water in the Air-stripper will rise slightly overnight, then you get up and take a shower, which returns the water level back to normal. Then you go off to work and the water starts to rise again, and then someone comes home and runs water. This cycle can go on for quite a long time and you wouldn’t ever realize that there is a problem, until you go away for a couple days, or a week, just to return home and find your basement full of water.

I don’t want to sound threatening or overbearing about this. It is just the plain honest truth about what can happen with these systems, if they are left to deteriorate. They need Annual Preventative Maintenance just like your Furnace. Do that and you will have many many years of reliable service from your system.

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )

In the recent Water Blog I discussed Working Water, Drinking water and Touched on Outdoor Water. This time I would like to expand more on Outdoor Water use. Entering into this new era of Green Construction most of the attention is being directed towards reducing the Consumption of Energy, although some credits are available for reducing the demand for water consumption. Outdoor Water use is the biggest abuser in the Potable Water category. Many of the solutions to today’s problems come from using answers from yesterday. Rain Barrels and Cisterns capture Rain that would otherwise be wasted. Landscapers are moving towards indigenous Shrubs, Perennials, and Trees that can survive in our ever changing New England environment.

An average Garden hose will deliver on average 8 Gallons Per Minute (gpm) where as an average household faucet will deliver 2 gpm. That is because the Faucets have flow restrictors in them to conserve water. In Outdoor use it is important to only restrict Water flow at the fixture itself. This is because every fixture is designed for different flows and pressures. To put this in better perspective a Garden Hose will deliver 240 gals. of water in a 1/2 hour and an average indoor Faucet only 60 gals. So if you have an irrigation system that runs for 2 hours to water the Lawn every morning that’s about 1000 gals a day or more. According to EPA calculations an average family of 4 only uses 200-300 gals of Water a day. For more information on water usage visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com.

When source Water is high in Metals it is not unusual to find Staining on Sidewalks, Granite Fixtures, and Siding. This Staining is best removed using an Acid based cleanser. It is possible to remove the Metals through Water Treatment Equipment. However, it will require a separate system than that which is currently treating the Working Water. Working Water systems are designed to treat the water at specific flows pressures and quantities. They backwash once the equipment reaches it’s capacity for Metals removal. If you are running 4-6 times more water through the irrigation system then it is very likely that your Water Water System is going to be under sized for the job of treating the Irrigation System. If you try to purchase a very large Water Treatment System to treat the Working Water and the Irrigation all in one, you will find yourself having a grossly over sized system during the 7-9 months when irrigation is not necessary. The system won’t clean itself often enough to keep itself fresh, unless it is adjusted to do so, and then it will use a ton of Salt to regenerate. That is why we recommend two systems in most cases. That way the Water Treatment System servicing the irrigation can be put in bypass in the Fall and then Serviced and sanitized in the Spring without any disruption to the Whole House Water System. More next time on Outdoor Water use!

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )

Choosing the right Water Treatment System can be simple when you are working with a Certified Water Specialist. It is even simpler when you understand the difference between Drinking Water and Working Water.

Working water is designed to perform many tasks around the house. Such as, laundry, dishes, showering flushing toilets, and washing things. It delivers clean water that will not leave behind staining from Mineral and Metal deposits. It’s also not acidic or corrosive on the plumbing fixtures. This water is perfect for most everything in the home, except for drinking.

Drinking water is not working water. Most Drinking Water Systems remove the Dissolved solids from the water down to extremely low levels. Drinking Water Systems also employ carbon filtration for taste and odor control. This extremely pure water will corrode plumbing fixtures and leach metals into the drinking water.For more information on Drinking Water Systems please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com.

In addition to working water and drinking water, there is outdoor water. This is used for irrigation, washing the car, cleaning down the siding, and such. Usually this water requires little or no treatment. In most situations it is best to have the outside hose bibs bypassed when installing a Water Treatment System. rainwater run off systems are becoming more popular these days. These systems reclaim the rainwater from the roofs of houses to be used in irrigation systems. This cuts down dramatically on the amount of water wasted every year.

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )

So far in the last two Blogs titled Arsenic and old…. Media, we have discussed the removal of Arsenic using Adsorptive Medias and proper disposal practices for the media. There are other ways to remove Arsenic from Water. To find out the best way to treat your water, slow down, contact a WQA Certified Water Specialist near you, ask them to speciate the Arsenic for you, go over the options and decide which approach fits your life style and budget. For more information on Arsenic removal systems please visit our website at www.secondwindwatersystems.com. If you are not within two hours of Manchester New Hampshire go online to www.kinetico.com or www.wqa.org to find a Certified Water Specialist near you.

Whenever we solve for a primary contaminant at Secondwind we always recommend redundancy as part of the system. One of the most common used Point of Use Systems, that ads quick redundancy, is Reverse Osmosis (RO). Usually these smaller point of use Drinking Water Systems are installed below the Kitchen sink area in the basement. They will remove over 90% of Arsenic 5 (AS5), they will also reduce Arsenic 3 (AS3). Although the AS3 reduction may not be satisfactory for your needs.

It is also possible to upgrade your (RO). Adding a high pressure pumping system ahead of your RO will get you even better Arsenic reduction. There are also Arsenic Media Cartridges that can be installed following the RO. The addition of Arsenic Media Cartridges following an RO is made easy through the K5 Kinetico Drinking Water System. The K5 has the ability to accept a bayonet type Cartridge after the RO membrane with just a 1/4 turn to install. Although most RO systems only serve one faucet and a refrigerator it is possible to have RO water at several locations in the house if you choose the right size RO and storage for your needs and have access to run separate plastic tubing lines through the house.

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )

In the last water Blog we discussed Arsenic Adsorption systems using a Lead/Lag design. Currently the NHDES is not controlling the disposal of Arsenic saturated media for Residential applications. You can take the used media to the town land fill and dispose of it there, unless your town has rules about the disposal of special waste.

For Public Water Systems (PWS) the NHDES is taking a more active role in enforcing the rules for the disposal of special waste. Currently when a PWS hires us to rebed their Arsenic Media we will sample the media and have a T-CLP test performed before having it incinerated. The T-CLP test proves that the Arsenic will not leach back off of the media during transportation or if it is buried in a land fill. Our preference is incineration because it is a final solution that will not come back to haunt anyone later if the rules change. The end customer is supplied with copies of the bill of lading, invoice for incineration and the T-CLP test for their records. It’s really a lot simpler than it sounds. In time this type of service may become necessary residentially, but not anytime soon.

So far we have discussed the removal of Arsenic from water using a Whole House approach through Adsorption. Next time I will cover the different types of point of use Drinking Water Systems for the removal of Arsenic from water.

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )

There’s more than one way to remove Arsenic from water. Just like there’s more than one kind of Arsenic in the water. Arsenic is commonly found in different forms. For the sake of this Blog we will be discussing the most common types, Arsenite (As3), and Arsenate (As5). As3 is a smaller weaker Isotope of Arsenic than As5. However the As3 form is far worse for your health.

Because of it’s larger stronger size it is easier to remove As5 from the water. This can be done through Filtration, Anion Exchange, or Adsorption. The most common form of reduction used in Residential sites is Adsorption. Since the new Arsenic rule was released by the USEPA in 2006 there have been many new Media lines released with very little documentation regarding life expectancy. This is because Water quality is different from region to region. For more information on this subject please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com.

Any time Secondwind solves for a Health concern we always recommend that redundancy be built into the system. If one system should stop working there should be a second, redundant, system in place to make the water safe. Therefore when we recommend Adsorption as a solution for Arsenic we usually are installing 2 tanks in series. When designing this system it is crucial to install a sampling port before the first Adsorber, at the mid point between Adsorbers, and after the second Adsorber. The 3 sampling ports are your life line to system diagnostics. The idea of having redundant tanks is that the first tank should offer ample contact time to adsorb all of the Arsenic, until the Media becomes exhausted. When the first Adsorber becomes exhausted As3, the smaller, weaker, and more harmful Isotope, will bleed through before the As5 does and so As3 will be the first to enter the fresh Second Adsorber. It is because of this that the Second Adsorber never last as long as the first.

Secondwind has been solving for Arsenic in water for many years. Our documentation indicates that it is most cost effective to replace the Arsenic media in the First Adsorber and switch the order of the tanks when the Mid Point samples reach 1/2 of the influent level. So if you have 30 ug/l coming in it would be most cost effective to exchange the Media when the Mid-point reaches 15 ug/l and then switch the order of the Adsorbers. If the lead Adsorber is not exchange with fresh Media at that point the Second Adsorber will become exhausted prematurely increasing the operation cost of the system. I will be writing more on this subject over the next few weeks.

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )

All too often low pH water gets overlooked on a lab test report, as being unimportant. This is because low pH is not a health concern to Humans. The truth is however that low pH water is a health concern for your building. H2O isn’t always H2O, sometimes the water will contain an over abundance of negative Hydrogen molecules that will attach themselves to Carbon Dioxide molecules creating Carbonic Acid. Carbonic Acid will slowly dissolve copper and other types of unprotected metals into the water stream. When these soluble metals spray out of a shower nozzle and come into contact with Oxygen in the air they will oxidize and cause the beautiful blue green stain that is seen in so many sinks and tubs. It is fitting that the stain is similar in color to money because that is what it is costing you,$$$$.

In addition to dissolving Copper pipes acidic water will also dissolve other metals. The agressive nature of the Acid is much more intense in Hot water. It is not unusual to only see staining in Hot water locations. Hot Water Tanks, Faucets, and fixtures will show signs of even wear, often becoming paper thin before leaking. For more information on corrosion and acidity please go to our website at www.secondwindwater.com .

Solutions for Acidity in Water are quite common and low tech. The most commonly used are Chemical Feed Pumps that inject either Sodium Hydroxide (Caustic Soda), Sodim Bi-Carbonate (Soda Ash), or Acid Neutralizing Filters using Calcium Carbonate chips called Calcite, and another filter media not used by Secondwind called Corosex. Air strippers will also raise the Ph because they will blow out the Carbon Dioxide gas however they will not add any buffers to the Water, so you will want a starting Alkalinity of around 35 to use just an Airstripper for pH control. Of the 4 most common options Secondwind will usually try to direct customers towards Calcite. Caustic Soda is very agressive and can cause serious reactions if applied dirrectly to the skin or eyes, and is not for sale to the general public in the State of New Hampshire. Corosex media has a tendancy to go hard if it sits too long in a filter tank and can cause an undesireably large jump in pH. That leaves Soda Ash and Calcite as the two safest approachs. The most commonly used approach from our last two solutions would be Calcite. This really comes down to service. Calcite tanks if sized appropriately will go at least a year between service calls, and Calcite will raise the pH up to a range of 7 to 7.5 and stop there. Where as a Chemical feed day tank should be refilled Monthly, and will need to be rebuilt and recalibrated annually.

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )

Just as I was starting to type I looked up and saw 99 existing Blog Posts on our dashboard. This has to be our 100th. This is exciting!!! If you are a regular reader of these Water Blogs please hear me when I say, ” Thank You”. This has been a very successful campaign for us.

The whole idea of writing a Blog twice a week is to help improve web placement of our company website www.secondwindwater.com . By writing these blogs our website is more likely to pop up on a Google search and that is important in this economy. We average about 250 hits to the website a month because of the blog. We were so happy with this that it just made sense to send the blog out to Facebook and start our own Fan page. It just seemed to make sense that if people were reading it, then why not try to get it in front of more people. In less than a year our Fan page is up 344 Fans and averages about 25 clicks a day to the blog. That’s about 1000 hits a Month, all people reading our Company name. It would be very unusual for some one to call us and say I want to buy a Water System from you because of the Blogs I read on line, but a 1000 hits month every month must be helping our bottom line somehow.

Over the next year I intend to blend in more information on Commercial Water Treatment applications for those of you that work with Commercial/Industrial Water Treatment Systems, Public Water Systems, as well as more Residential survival stories. Many people are unaware of all of the different areas of Water Treatment that we work in, such as the removal of MTBE, Benzene and other Gasoline, Fuel Oil bi-products and that we work with about 130 Small Public Water Systems around New Hampshire keeping them in compliance with NHDES and the EPA. So hopefully that will be useful informative reading for everyone.

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )

With Spring on our door steps many New Englanders are pumped up about getting outdoors and opening up their Camps.

Back in the early 1990′s when I was a Lab Tech it always amazed me how many Camps on Bedrock Wells would fail their Coliform Bacteria tests. As Water sits stagnant in a well and household plumbing Bacterial colonies reproduce and could potentially make someone sick. Shocking the well is a good step in the Spring start up of any Camp. For complete instructions on how to sanitize a well. Please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com .

Sometimes one Chlorination of the plumbing is not enough to solve the problem this is usually caused by the presence of Bio Slime. Bio-Slime is very slippery and is usually clear in color, like a clear gelatin. If Iron and or Manganese are present in the Water the Bio Slime will usually take on the color of those metals. Bio-Slime grows around the Bacterial Colonies. This will protect the Bacteria and make it harder to disinfect. Bio Slime is much more likely to occur in Water that has been allowed to become stagnant and/or too warm. The use of a strong oxidizer like Chlorine will break down the Bio Slime and kill the Bacteria but it may take longer than expected. So don’t give up after the first or second try, be persistent and eventually you will win out.

There are many types of Bacteria in Water. Not all of them are bad for your health. In fact your body needs Bacteria in order to survive. It is possible to pass a standard Laboratory Bacteria test and still have complications from Bio-Slime. Many of the these additional types of Bacteria can be accounted for by running an SPC/HPC Bacteria test.

Thank you for your continued support of Secondwind Water Systems. We truly appreciate your business and referrals. If you have any Water questions please visit our website at www.secondwindwater.com or call 1-800-287-5767. Until next time this is Chris Saltmarsh CWS-6, saying, “Thanks for reading!, and enjoy your great water”… : )