The image shown here shows what the filtration equipment does.  During the maintenance, I changed all the filter cartridges, the "pre" filter, a "post" filter and did some other service.  The "pre" filter is exposed to water coming directly from the city of Edmonton.  If the water is so good, what is all the gunk all over the filter?  The "post" filter is also shown – it was installed at the same time as the "pre" filter, the only difference is that the "post" filter only has water that has been treated by reverse osmosis running over and through it.

The difference?  As you can see, other than the fact it is wet and showing a little bit of the carbon block filter it is wrapped around (think of a wet, clingy t-shirt, and how it can become translucent) it is clearly still in like-new, "white" condition.  A brand new, still in the wrapper filter cartridge is shown in the middle for reference.

My question is simple – if the water quality in Edmonton, Sherwood Park, St. Albert and the entire Greater Edmonton Area is so good, why do the filters turn this horrible colour after being exposed to our pristine water supply?

Treatment is quick, efficient and easy to use, requires very little maintenance and gives peace of mind – we get rid of the gunk!

"If it was good enough for my grandparents, it is good enough for me!"

While on the surface, this makes sense, when you dig a little deeper, it is easy to see we don't live in the same world our grandparents did.  There are thousands upon thousands of drugs, chemicals and additives we are forced to deal with every day – there's a good chance the grandpa drinking the well water didn't drink it from a plastic cup because plastic may not have been invented yet!

In a rural area, you may not be overly concerned with pharmaceuticals and those kind of chemicals – but… what about pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers?  There are thousands of types that weren't even imagined when grandpa drew water from your well.  We definitely live in a different world now and one thing we have to take seriously is our health.  (Grandpa probably didn't live in an era where he knew many people that got cancer either – that is a product of our unnatural environment!)

The fact is, when you draw water from a private well, there is no city scientist, no government agency – no one but you to ensure the water you drink is safe for your family.  Having pure, safe and clean water is not only easy, but also affordable.

250,000 people in farm areas in California were recently affected by excessive nitrate levels in the ground water.  This problem is new – it didn't exist there a few years ago – but with the increasing application of chemicals in their environment, unsafe drinking water is the result.  The problem has no taste, no odour, nor any colour – nitrate problems are is easily detectable with a field test kit, and easily removed with most of the drinking water systems we provide.  Once an on-site purification system is installed, you have protection from nitrates, arsenic, lead, and thousands and thousands of possible chemical threats to your family's health.

Chlorine is added to clear up the water, and ammonia is added to help preserve the chlorine, as well as to mask some of the smell.  (Mixing the two together creates "chloramine" -the legal name for this type of disinfection.)  Because contaminant levels are higher in spring, more chemicals are added to the water.

The result?  The water still looks clean and clear, but has more odour to it, as well as increased "disinfection byproducts" -these are the chemicals which form when chlorine and ammonia react with the materials in the water.  These byproducts have been associated with some health concerns which is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that although they are kept to reasonable levels, they are present in the water and are not good for you.

Many clients, especially this time of year, choose a treatment system that removes the odour, taste and chemicals from the water in the home, resulting in better tasting, healthier water that isn't exposing you to harmful chemicals when you bathe, shower, wash in or drink the water.  The result is water that tastes great, is better for you, your hair and skin, and leaves you refreshed, not dried out, itchy and looking for moisturizer.  Treated water helps appliances last longer and saves you money on heating, detergent usage and plumbing maintenance.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the responsibility of home owners to look after their “stuff” – if there are sewer backups, storm water backups, power outages that cut off water supplies, rural home owners need to be prepared.  Two areas of critical importance are the pumps that get water out of and away from your home.  This normally includes a sump pump under your home and a septic pump that feeds your septic drainage system.  If either of these pumps fail, home owners could be in serious trouble – and fast!

Perhaps the best form of insurance is a spare “emergency” sump pump.  If either of these two pumps fail, having a ready-to-go pump on hand can allow you to quickly and effectively empty out a sump pit, or “filled to the brim” septic tank.  In the case of a winter septic emergency (ie. your septic pump failing) you are legally allowed to pump out your tank to a nearby bush area, provided you meet a few guidelines about the chosen location (that’s outside the scope of this article and will vary from county to county, so look up bylaw information in your area first!)

Likewise, if your sump pump fails and you start to see water from under the home finding its way into the home, quickly dropping in your spare pump will allow you to get that water down to a manageable level.  In both circumstances, what this does is buy you time.  You now don’t “NEED” an emergency call from a plumber or septic repair company.  Let’s face it, these problems usually happen late Friday night, when its -30, and after normal service hours end, usually two days away from most service companies’ regular rate service hours.

Usually for around $100 at your local plumbing supply or hardware store, you can get yourself a spare pump and enough hose to run the line to the nearest relief zone – again, that “bush” area mentioned earlier.  It’s much easier to scope out the property and come up with a plan ahead of time, when it’s nice out – and not pitch black, rather than running into town at an odd hour, then wondering what kind and how long the tubing needs to be to get to that area of relief.

Prevention is the best medicine – have your systems serviced and checked annually, and as a backup, always have a spare pump on-hand.  With rural living comes certain responsibilities.  This isn’t really even a matter of IF this will happen to you, it’s more a matter of WHEN  – so when the time comes, be prepared and have the equipment you need to resolve the emergency ready, know where it is, how it operates and where you are going to pump that stuff!

There are two main causes of this, and the first thing to check is your hot water.  If the odour is new, meaning it wasn’t something you noticed in the water a few months ago, then do a quick and free water test – plug the drain and run your hot water into the sink – let it fill up a few inches and give it the smell test.  Is there odour?  How strong is it?

Then repeat the test, but this time with cold water.  If you have odour on the hot water, but not the cold water, this problem could be fixed very quickly and easily by your plumber, or a handy home owner.  You likely need to replace the anode rod on your hot water tank.  There are a number of factors in well water that can cause the problem, but the fix is pretty simple.

If you have odour on both hot and cold water, the issue is likely either sulfur in the water (h2s gas) or can, in some cases, be from the iron content.  Treating the water presents a few options, all of which will involve oxidation of some sort – meaning taking the gases from the water and making them react to form solids which can then be filtered out.

Common solutions involve chlorine injection – a process by which chlorine is dosed into the water, allowed to react (usually for about 10 minutes in a contact or “retention” tank,) then filtered out by a media that would remove both the chlorine and the sediment.  This usually clarifies the water as well and has long-been a relatively low-cost way to treat iron and sulfur issues.

We prefer to inject hydrogen peroxide instead of chlorine.  It is much nicer to work with, is a stronger oxidizer, and doesn’t need to be removed – instead the home owner just keeps some simple test strips in their kitchen and periodically checks to ensure there’s a little hydrogen peroxide left at the tap.  If there is, then it’s doing its job and everything should be fine.  Because the hydrogen peroxide doesn’t need to be removed, we can focus more attention on the sediment and give even better filtration to the whole home – resulting in the clearest, cleanest water supply possible, and longer life for hot water tanks, faucets and appliances.

Iron filters are another way, but really would only work if the rotten egg odour is not caused by the presence of SRB’s, or “Sulfur Reducing Bacteria.”  If they are the root cause, then chemical injection oxidation may be the best way to go.  The nice thing about iron filters is that they are much lower maintenance.  Usually they are set to regenerate and backwash about once a week (depending on filter size and water usage) and typically can contain an entire year’s worth of regenerant in their tank – meaning you don’t have a lot of maintenance.  The main down-side to chlorine or other chemical injection systems is that you need to store, handle and sometimes mix/dilute chemicals in the home.

To find out more on treating sulfur in well water, or troubleshooting rotten egg odour, contact a water treatment professional.

Just this week, New York was mandated by the EPA to reduce the lead detected in their public school’s tap water – the water in the fountains, the water children drank every day while attending classes.  (If you’re a fan of irony, picture sending your kids to school to learn and hearing they have been drinking something that lowers IQ!)  Last week, there was a story about water quality in Cedar City, Utah – this time, they had detected excessive nitrate levels in the water and needed to reduce them to legal limits.  Nitrates in drinking water cause what is referred to as “blue baby syndrome” in infants, and all around is something to be avoided in drinking water.

So where am I going with this?  The water that we always take for granted, the water that is supposedly safe for us, from time to time does test positive for contaminants that are known to be harmful to us.  There is no disputing it; there are chemicals in water, plenty of them – whether drugs from prescriptions, disinfection by-products from adding chlorine (and in Edmonton city water’s case, also the addition of ammonia,) fluoride (which has been in the news a lot as of late and something people are now treating as a contaminant rather than a health benefit) – the issue is: what is safe, at what level and what are the risks?

When I visit rural land owners (farms, acreages, etc.) with private wells – many times people drink the water right from the well with no treatment at all.  “If it was safe for my Great Grandpa who dug the well 100 years ago, it oughta be safe for me now!” -I hear this all the time.  Problem is – there are about 10,000 new chemicals added to our environment every single year now.  There are literally millions of chemicals, drugs, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides that are sprayed, used and also rain down from the air pollution so prevalent these days.  What was safe 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 20 or 30 years ago may not be safe any more.

Municipalities can be slow to react to threats – often because there are so many things we don’t even bother testing for.  What it comes down to is the plain fact that we don’t always know what is in our water – and with the rates of cancer these days being what they are, does it not make sense to be safe, invest a little in prevention and make sure the water you and your family drink is just good old H2O?  Not H2O and a whole bunch of other stuff we don’t know about, but assume to be safe?

A recent study announced by CBC found that 70% of bottled water was contaminated with bacteria and other health concerns.  Most bottled water starts out as tap water anyway and with no law regulating what they do and don’t have to do to the water they sell, what is the alternative?  What is the safest thing to do?  We recommend water purification installed into the home.  For pennies a glass, much less than the cost of bottled, you can make your own purified water, as you need it and have control over what is actually in your glass.

Our bodies are about 70% water – to me, it makes sense to ensure it is composed of the highest quality water available.  There are so many risks we face every day in society – why make something as simple and necessary as safe, clean, pure drinking water one of those risks?

 

Septic disposal fields are typically designed to last for about 20-25 years – if you get that amount of life from your disposal field, the engineer that designed it and the installer that put it in did their job properly.  With normal technology, this is all that can be asked.  Why?  The problem is called “biomat” – this is a byproduct created when the normal bacteria from our gut process organic material.  It ends up creating biomat which is kind of like a slimy tarp that wraps and clogs up your disposal field.  As it accumulates, drain flow slows down.  Year after year, it just gets worse, until one winter, finally the flow is too slow and our cold Canadian winter causes the liquid to freeze out in the field – completely stopping flow, and usually resulting in either a break through (smelly mess in the yard) or a wet and disgusting basement.

Once the emergency is dealt with, what is the next step?  If this is happening, it is normally the first indication that the disposal field is nearing the end of it’s life.  Normally, that means digging up, removing and hauling the soil away for hazardous waste disposal, putting in a new drainage system and covering it with fresh soil – or perhaps if your land is big enough, relocating the disposal area to another part of the property, and depending upon where you live, it probably also means the installation of a new disposal mound (as fields are getting more restrictive for permitting now.)

A better, less-expensive, and permanent solution is our Pirana Method for septic remediation.  If slow drainage is the problem, biomat is almost always the cause, and we can remediate the disposal field, restoring full function and bringing service back to “brand new” condition, and can even guarantee to keep it that way, as long as you run the Pirana system.  Installation is normally done in a single day, with minimal landscaping interference, and best of all – the cost is only about 25-30% of a new system.  As an added bonus, Pirana clients should never have to have their solids pumped from their tanks ever again – the same process that digests the biomat in the fields will also digest all the solids and organic material in the septic tank, resulting in clear and ODOURLESS effluent – a very pleasant change.

If things are still at the early stages, remediation is normally very quick and extremely effective.  If things have progressed a long way, a little more work may be needed, but if there is a solution, it will be a guaranteed one.

For more info on the Pirana Method of remediation, please refer to the SEPTIC section of douglasenviro.ca or call 780-410-0837 to arrange a free, no obligation consultation to see if this is the solution to drainage problems.  We are now booking for spring installations for remediation services.

An efffective way to ensure the right solution is offered is to get as much data as possible.  In this case, the clients already had a well water report done by a lab, so for the most part, it was simply a case of discussing their anticipated usage, their needs, their layout and plans as well as finding a solution that would work for their budget – without flooding their septic field – something far too many people neglect when it comes to saving a buck on well water treatment.

After a few “back and forths” we knew what would work for their water and I presented some options for treatment solutions.  We discussed it for a while, came to an agreement and things were all handled over the phone.  As much as I like being in client’s basements and kitchens discussing this, sometimes it isn’t possible and with a little communication (and the help of a mini camcorder) everything can be sorted out – even from a distance.

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A feature in last week’s Sherwood Park News talked about the County’s “Green” technology companies – businesses, local businesses, that are making a difference in the community and in the environmental sector.  Douglas Environmental was featured prominently in this section for their environmentally friendly water treatment, improving air quality – a key and often overlooked component of having safe, healthy environments, as well as our Pirana Method septic field remediation system (they called it a septic tank remediation system in the article, but the idea came across pretty clearly.)

It’s nice to see the local businesses that are trying to make a difference get some recognition.  This can be a challenging field to work with – often representing ideas and technology that are new, not part of the mainstream mindset and often requiring a lot of education for clients to grasp the concepts and see how they can benefit themselves, not just making the world a greener place.

For more information on the Sherwood Park Chamber of Commerce’s Environmental Committee, its members or its programs, please see: www.sherwoodparkchamber.com

Aerobic bacteria, or bacteria functioning metabolically with an aerobic metabolism, need free oxygen but they need it instantly and constantly to be efficient at digesting or metabolizing organic compounds (ie. the polite term for the “stuff” going into a septic system!)  Aerobic devices that depend on dissolved oxygen (D.O.) in water to supply the “free oxygen” to aerobic bacteria (we trap within these devices and force them to work for us) are not efficient.

Why??? Simple.  Dissolved Oxygen is NOT constant within water. There is a mosaic of “free oxygen” in the water (7mg/l in water is considered saturated.) Not very much oxygen by the way and saturated D.O. does not exist in most aerobic devices (except ours.)

The D.O. is not a constant in every measurable amount of the water. The bacteria are not in constant contact with the “free oxygen” at all times as they would be if in atmospheric conditions. They have to wait (like waiting for a bus) until the “free oxygen” molecule happens along (again like the bus) for them to metabolize the oxygen and organic compounds (stuff). Luckily bacteria don’t appear to have the same frustration potential as humans (again like the bus.)

So if we want efficiency in “aerobic treatment, we don’t want the treatment to merely be aerobic, we want it to be atmospheric-like. Welllllllll, guess what? There is such a device – a device that creawtes atmospheric-like conditions while installed on the bottom of your septic tank.  It’s called the Pirana Solution.

The system is quite small, three feet tall and twelve inches in diameter (or less depending upon installation requirements,) and very easy to install. They use very little electricity, require 2 cfm or less of air at less than 4 psi. Why small, easy and use little energy? Because the bacteria live in “atmospheric like oxygen” conditions within the devices. This means the bacteria have instant and constant access to oxygen to metabolize organic compounds (stuff). This means efficiency. Efficient allows for reduced size but increased effectiveness.

So when you think of aerobic treatment, qualify your thinking and think “atmospheric like” aerobic treatment. You now understand the difference and have a choice.