Sometimes you need to call in the big guns...

Today was an interesting day.  I had a meeting with some clients we have helped with air quality a few years ago.  They decided to do some home renos and before they replace their sinks, toilets, shower and bathtub, and wanted to resolve their iron staining problems resulting from using raw well water in their home.  We scheduled a water testing appointment for this afternoon and proceeded to start the analysis.

As useful as a field test kit/portable lab is, sometimes you need to call in the "big guns."  When there are higher levels of things like iron, hydrogen sulfide (H2S gas) or especially tannins in the water, they are easy to detect and easy to treat.  Its when there are just "trace" amounts present that field equipment meets its match.  Today was one of those days.  There were extremely low levels present of H2S, possible low-level iron and appeared to be trace amounts of tannins in the water.  The only conservative way to treat this is to set up a system to treat all these problems.  There is a specific type of filtration equipment that can handle both H2S and iron, so those two can be grouped together, but tannins are a completely separate beast.

In order to guarantee results (in our case, for 25 years - the warranty period for our water treatment equipment) we need to be certain of the water chemistry.  In this case, we need to defer to a lab.  Depending upon whether or not these elements are present in the water, there are VASTLY different recommendations we can make for treatment.  Proper lab analysis will tell us exactly what is there, as well as bringing the piece of mind for testing for the "Health Canada Metals" in the water and for the presence of coliform.

The lab work costs less than $200 and in about 5 days, we'll have the answer.  Once we know exactly what we're dealing with, we can move ahead confidently.  The easy answer would be to recommend and install an elaborate treatment system that would handle all these contaminants, but that is not really in the best interest of the client.  Ultimately, this is a small world and overselling is something that will always catch up to a company.  In this case, we spend a little more up-front and can recommend exactly the right system to treat their specific water problems.