Water Filtration
When I was a kid back in North Dakota, we had well water. It tasted fine, but once in a great while during some of the drought years you'd get red water coming through the pipes. The water here in Northeast Ohio comes from Lake Erie, and to me it tastes fine, especially when you compare it to the water in some parts of southern Ohio that I've visited. Some places like Delphos have to really pour on the chlorination to make the water safe to drink, to the point where it's sort of like drinking a swimming pool. You can do it, but you probably won't enjoy it all that much.
Anyway, although the water tastes good to me, M doesn't like the flavor. She also noted that there is a rust residue that builds up in the shower over time. Additionally, there is some mineral build up on the sinks and faucets. To that end, she was strongly in favor of getting a water softener. We'd gotten one of those in North Dakota at some point, probably when I was in high school. It involved pouring huge bags of salt into the tank every couple of months. We have plenty of room in our basement so I wasn't opposed to doing the same here.
As it happens, water softeners of that style are now not the only option. For more money, you can get a whole house filtration unit that both removes the minerals that make "hard" water hard as well as filtering out anything that the water company didn't care to remove. As a nice bonus, instead of pouring salt in every 3 months you can swap out the filter, which doesn't require lifting a giant bag of salt and only needs to be done every 8-10 years to boot. This seemed like a no brainer when our the plumber gave us an option, so we slapped down our deposit in September.
By that point, the pandemic had already impacted supply chains, particularly anything that had even a vague connection to with the building trade. The plumber told us it would probably take 12 weeks for the manufacturer to ship us the EWS Spectrum unit we ordered. Since we weren't in a hurry, that was fine with us. Of course, the supply chain pain was a little more severe than expected. The upshot is that instead of arriving in December, our device was installed last Tuesday, a scant seven months after we put down our deposit. I was told that if we'd ordered one today, the cost would have gone up substantially from the price we locked in back in September and the wait wouldn't be any shorter.
Slow delivery aside, everything went fine. Our old water valve for the whole house only had one valve on it instead of the recommended two, so we got that replaced at the same time. The city came out and shut off our water right on schedule, the plumbers popped in the new valves, then added the filtration unit. Our three outdoor faucets now hook up to the pipes before the filtration unit so we don't waste filtered water when we use it outside. An emergency drain was run to the closest floor drain by the boiler. All of this took about six hours, which is exactly how long the plumber estimated it would take when they originally came out in September. The city came back and did the inspection of the new valve and then turned the water back on. We had to run the faucets for a few minutes as the first water through the filter brings some debris through the pipes, but after that we were in business.
The water feels different, which is a strange thing to say but is definitely true. It really does feel "softer" and slippier than it did before. It's like the water is wetter, sort of. The filtration unit itself looks like the big bottles that helium is stored in at balloon stores with a small screen on top. The water comes into the house and into the filtration unit before going back out into the existing pipes. I think it tastes about the same, but M is quite happy with it, which is the main thing.
The only problem we had with the entire situation was that the next morning when we woke up, our heat wasn't on. Since we had to replace a bunch of boiler parts last November, I initially feared the worst, but it turns out that the boiler switch (which looks like a normal light switch) had been turned off. Flipping it back on fixed the problem. Based on the location of the switch, my guess is that when the plumbers were reworking the pipe to one of the outdoor faucets they probably bumped the switch without realizing it.
Anyway, although the water tastes good to me, M doesn't like the flavor. She also noted that there is a rust residue that builds up in the shower over time. Additionally, there is some mineral build up on the sinks and faucets. To that end, she was strongly in favor of getting a water softener. We'd gotten one of those in North Dakota at some point, probably when I was in high school. It involved pouring huge bags of salt into the tank every couple of months. We have plenty of room in our basement so I wasn't opposed to doing the same here.
As it happens, water softeners of that style are now not the only option. For more money, you can get a whole house filtration unit that both removes the minerals that make "hard" water hard as well as filtering out anything that the water company didn't care to remove. As a nice bonus, instead of pouring salt in every 3 months you can swap out the filter, which doesn't require lifting a giant bag of salt and only needs to be done every 8-10 years to boot. This seemed like a no brainer when our the plumber gave us an option, so we slapped down our deposit in September.
By that point, the pandemic had already impacted supply chains, particularly anything that had even a vague connection to with the building trade. The plumber told us it would probably take 12 weeks for the manufacturer to ship us the EWS Spectrum unit we ordered. Since we weren't in a hurry, that was fine with us. Of course, the supply chain pain was a little more severe than expected. The upshot is that instead of arriving in December, our device was installed last Tuesday, a scant seven months after we put down our deposit. I was told that if we'd ordered one today, the cost would have gone up substantially from the price we locked in back in September and the wait wouldn't be any shorter.
Slow delivery aside, everything went fine. Our old water valve for the whole house only had one valve on it instead of the recommended two, so we got that replaced at the same time. The city came out and shut off our water right on schedule, the plumbers popped in the new valves, then added the filtration unit. Our three outdoor faucets now hook up to the pipes before the filtration unit so we don't waste filtered water when we use it outside. An emergency drain was run to the closest floor drain by the boiler. All of this took about six hours, which is exactly how long the plumber estimated it would take when they originally came out in September. The city came back and did the inspection of the new valve and then turned the water back on. We had to run the faucets for a few minutes as the first water through the filter brings some debris through the pipes, but after that we were in business.
The water feels different, which is a strange thing to say but is definitely true. It really does feel "softer" and slippier than it did before. It's like the water is wetter, sort of. The filtration unit itself looks like the big bottles that helium is stored in at balloon stores with a small screen on top. The water comes into the house and into the filtration unit before going back out into the existing pipes. I think it tastes about the same, but M is quite happy with it, which is the main thing.
The only problem we had with the entire situation was that the next morning when we woke up, our heat wasn't on. Since we had to replace a bunch of boiler parts last November, I initially feared the worst, but it turns out that the boiler switch (which looks like a normal light switch) had been turned off. Flipping it back on fixed the problem. Based on the location of the switch, my guess is that when the plumbers were reworking the pipe to one of the outdoor faucets they probably bumped the switch without realizing it.