How to Tell If You Have Hard Water + Filter Replacement Guide (June Q&A)

Hey guys, it's AJ. We're back again with another Q&A for the month of June. We've got five really good questions, so let's go ahead and jump right into it. How do I know if my area has hard water? Um, this is a question a lot of people ask because more and more they're finding about finding out about hard water and they're wondering if that applies to me.

There's a couple of really easy ways that you can tell. So, you're going to want to look out for like any white spotting on your dishes, your glasses, things like that, anything in the dishwasher or maybe in the shower like on your glass, like if you have glass in your shower, there might be spotting, that could be hard water. It could also be like maybe you get out of the shower and your skin or your hair is kind of dry, which could also be chlorine, but could be hardness, too. So, if you see like the combination of those things, you might be dealing with hardness. You can try like a little test at home, too, where if you take like a bottle or a cup of water and mix a little bit of soap and shake it, like if it foams up a lot, you probably don't have really hard water, but if it's a little bit cloudy and like doesn't bubble up as much, maybe hard water.

None of these are going to be like definite because hard water can can look like other things, too, but it's a good way to kind of like get your first step, first test. Um, and you can also check like your CCR, which is your consumer confidence report. That's the municipality, the city. They release a report that tells you how much hardness sometimes. Uh, so that's a couple of ways.

Uh, we also have a map on the website. So, you can go ahead and put your zip code in or use your location. It'll pull any reports near you and average it out and give you an idea of where you're at, but best ways with a water test or a hardness test. So, that's how you can find out if you have hard water. Do I need a water softener or a filter and what's the difference?

This is a a very common question, too, and it's important to know the difference because that can change what you're getting out of your water. So, uh, it's important to know different jobs, two completely different focuses. When you're talking about a softener, you're looking at a system that will remove the hard minerals from your water that cause scale and build up and things like that. So, calcium magnesium will get replaced with like sodium in most cases. That's a softener.

A filter is going to be a system that removes any contaminants outside of that. So, chlorine, chloramine, lead, VOCs, whatever it is. Two very different cases of use. One for hard water, one for contaminants. My new filter's water came out gray / black and tasted funny at first.

Can't imagine it tasted good. Did I get a bad one? And the short answer is no, you probably did not get a bad one. You could have. That's very possible, but I would I would bet a lot of money that it wasn't a bad filter.

Sounds like it might not have been fully primed or prepared for drinking water use. So, with carbon with carbon cartridges and really any other cartridge, actually, So, with So, with the water filter cartridges, it's really important that you take the time when you first get them to actually prime the cartridge. So, that means like soaking it in water for however long your manual says. Usually, it's like 20 minutes, could be an hour, could be longer, just depends. And then also maybe running water through it to properly flush everything out.

The gray black is going to be carbon fines or particulates. It's not harmful, but it's not going to taste great. So, I can't imagine that that was a pleasant experience. If this wasn't a new filter, then it might be bad, but I'm I'm going to Well, you said it was a new filter, so never mind, but yeah. Hopefully, that helps.

So, we have a customer who said, "My arsenic filter works great. My son's water tested for lead and maybe other stuff. What do you recommend?" First of all, thank you for choosing our water filter systems. I I really appreciate that and I hope that it's been treating you well. What do you recommend?

Really broad question. We want to know are we only dealing with lead? Is lead coming from infrastructure outside of the home or in the home? And do we want whole home filtration or point of use? We don't want whole home if the lead is coming from inside of the house.

So, I would recommend an under sink RO. [Editorial note: The recorded replacement interval discussion is omitted because product guidance has changed. Refer to current product instructions.] Uh last question is, well, I guess bonus question, right? Would be about a vacuum breaker. And a customer is saying that they are trying to buy a vacuum breaker or they did buy a vac vacuum breaker and they're having difficulty identifying what it looks like and the chat AI chat's not helping them out too much. So, I'm sorry about AI chat not helping you.

Humans can always answer that question for you. So, your vacuum breaker is going to look like this. Can you edit it? Can you Can you edit it on screen? It's going to look like something like this.

It'll look exactly like this. We wanted to grab one for the video, but we completely forgot. So, we're going to edit it on here. And uh yeah. So, a vacuum breaker is responsible for protecting both your system and your drinking water.

You know, if a drop in pressure were to happen, maybe there's, you know, a vacuum that's formed, it will prevent any back siphonage from pulling water from the system. And this will protect both your system and your drinking water from contaminated water.