When to DIY and when to contact our water system experts

Doing your own maintenance on an existing water treatment system might be well within your skills. In fact, we have a new, free download, Home Water Systems Headache Checklist. It details some common water problems you can handle without  a visit from one of our specialists.

Before you start DIY maintenance on your home water system, it’s important to remember some important steps.

Sanitizing when changing a water filter

For example, changing the cartridges is easy on the K5 drinking water system. But, sanitization of the K5 at the time of a filter change is vital. As the filters are changed, the unit is exposed to air and potential contaminants. Sanitization assures that the unit and filters are free of contamination and are free of any buildup of a bio film due to non chlorinated well water that it processes. Sanitization also works out air from the unit that may become troublesome after the filter change.

We have had occasions where a homeowner changed their K5 cartridges regularly but never did the sanitization, and performance problems ensued with the unit.

Neutralizing challenges

Servicing your neutralizer Neutralizing the water tank is also an easy DIY task. After all, what could be so hard about opening a tank and putting in some calcite?  These are the things that have gone wrong at some customers’ homes, including:

• Adding too much calcite
• Filling the distributor tube full of calcite
• Pulling out the distributor tube by accident
• Not flushing enough of the fresh calcite
• Breaking a part on the head or valve
• Forgetting to disinfect at the end of the procedure

Any one of these simple mistakes can lead to a huge headache.

Other challenges

A quartz sleeve surrounds the UV light bulb on some water systems, so the light bulb doesn’t come in direct contact with water. Customers are aware that the bulb should be changed on an annual basis.

But what if you change the bulb on your UV and forget to clean the quartz sleeve, or worse, break the quartz sleeve?  Now your unit is out of commission until you get a replacement.

Remember to consult the manual for your water system before performing DIY maintenance. You can also contact our customer service team – real people in our office who answer your questions. They may be able to answer your questions so you can perform the maintenance yourself, or they may advise a visit from our expert technicians.

And don’t forget to download our water headaches checklist. It can help you solve some common or not so common challenges.