Welcome back to another Gordon Water wisdom, we spent time with Gordon Water Systems, specifically, Tom Duisterhof. He and his team have been working at making water clean and safe in your home or business for about about 50 years now, and in fact, if you’ve been following along with some of our episodes, we’ve talked to some degree about drinking water systems and then more recently, we’ve talked about things like PFAS, arsenic and some of these toxins that you want to be sure to get out of your place of business or your home, and that might dictate a whole house water system. Isn’t that right, Tom?

It is Richard. Whole house is a broad term for a number of pieces of equipment. What we really want to convey to our listeners today is the fact that you need trained, reputable integrity, people in your home to evaluate your water chemistry, which is obviously step one to best know what needs to be done, to listen to your concerns, to understand your budget constraints, and then also evaluate the piping and the plumbing and the real estate available, the space available, because those are all key factors in the solutions that we’re going to recommend to a family. An iron system can be about the size of a water softener, a standard water softener, but even water softeners with a non-electric Kinetico system that we’ve been selling for 45 years, they have a variety of sizes. I have one in my home that’s about knee high, and so is the brine tank. We fit that in some very tight spaces. But my water chemistry allows for that size system. It’s the most efficient system on the market, and it doesn’t take up a lot of space. So when you look at a whole house system, it really takes really good company and that quality person to be in your home.

And I may have mentioned in other episodes, but our water specialists are WQA certified, and they’re either certified or in the process or going to be in the process if they are new enough, they have to be exposed to water treatment and be in the home to understand all the testing that goes into WQA certification. And we’re really excited that a good share, if not the vast majority of our water specialists are certified. And so what that tells somebody is when you invite them or you have them into your home, they are understanding the technology behind what they’re talking about. And there’s a code of ethics that goes with the WQA, along with the Gordon Water corporate character. We’ve built nearly 50 years on the foundation of being a company of integrity and knowledge, and we are about educating our customers. So you got to feel comfortable with the people that are asking you to part with $1,500 – $15,000, depending on what you’re looking to do. And I mentioned the $15,000 because we’ve done a number of whole home reverse osmosis systems that is a level beyond rust and odor in softening because you’ve got not only pre-treatment, but you now have storage tanks and reverse osmosis systems with level controls and repressurization pumps. It gets pretty sophisticated. We’ve worked with a really good supplier to come up with compact storage tanks as compact as we can, and delivery pumps that can be as quiet as possible in somebody’s home.

But when you get to a whole home RO, you really need that company that understands what your needs are, what you’re going to need to do to prepare for the RO system before it gets installed, utility wise. electrical and maybe some other accommodations for real estate, then also to supply really good equipment and make those recommendations and walk with you afterwards. We’ve never been a company and you don’t want to find or work with somebody that’s going to sell you something that sounds great or is low cost, and a year from now, you can’t find them. Those businesses exist in every industry and they exist in the water treatment business. And I can tell you, quite frankly, in the last three to four years, there have been two or three people that that showed up in West Michigan, made a big splash, made a lot of claims and gained some customers, and then were gone like that. All of a sudden we were getting calls because the website was dead, the phone numbers were dead and one guy even made the news. Quality and integrity and knowledge are so critical in in supporting your family and your house with quality equipment.

I guess I’m not surprised to hear that, given how much safe water has jumped in terms of what you’re hearing in the news out there over the last six or seven years, given the Flint situation and PFAS and all of these things that have happened, people have had their interest and their concerns about clean water and safe water elevated. And so of course, some of us have decided that would be a good business to get to all of a sudden. But you’re right. Yeah, you want to make sure you’ve got the right person handling it.

Yeah. And just a quick note, because you triggered something you know when a storm, a tornado or, you know, high winds blow through an area. Suddenly, roofers and remodelers or siding people show up out of nowhere, knocking on your door. The same thing happened with PFAS. And what that did was people were knocking on doors saying we will fix your water. And they didn’t last very long, but they saw an opportunity to take advantage of people’s concerns and needs. Yeah, and it’s unfortunate. But it happened. It sure is.

You hear about that, too in hurricane areas and things like that happen. These things happen. People try to take advantage. Let me just quickly ask this question. A whole house system might be necessary because there is a concern about PFAS or there is a concern about arsenic, that sort of thing. What would be the situation or maybe the most common situation under which you’d say, OK, this is a whole house reverse osmosis situation. The solution is necessary. This is the Cadillac of them, I suppose. Right? What would dictate that?

Well, we’ve seen both ends of the spectrum. What I mean by that is we can treat the water with a couple of smaller pieces of equipment. But the person moving in had health concerns, and they had, in all candor, the budget to be able to afford a whole home reverse osmosis system. And they said, I want high purity drinking water at every spot in my bathroom sinks, I don’t care a shower or whatever. I want to be assured that I’m getting high quality water. So that’s one end of the spectrum. The other end of the spectrum, there’s two other issues. One is high sulfates, which quite frankly causes digestive problems, and it can cause some odor and taste in somebody’s water. That’s one that we’ve run into, we’ve done whole house ROs. The other one is a brine shelf salt water. There are some spots in West Michigan, mainly along the Thornapple River in the Grand Rapids area, Coopersville along the Grand River has some spots where there’s some brine shelf, some salt water. There’s even some out in the center of Borculo. We’ve come across some high, TDS water out in the country. And so those do merit, quite frankly, a whole home RO because it’s the only way to treat some of those issues.

Ok, and these are things that you might not have realized they’re going on with your water. And this, I presume, is part of the advantage of having an evaluation done, first of all, but also a 50 year company that can sit here and say, Yep, we know that a brine shelf is in Borculo. We know this.

Yeah, right. It does help for that.

We’ve got one application right now, our water specialist listened, paid attention, observed the water. We were the fifth water company in there. And we do not have this problem. But it took the stick-to-itiveness on the part of our water specialist and really listening and agreeing that the customer isn’t crazy. We’ve recently come across high levels of methane in a private, well. And guess what? Methane, just like natural gas, they had smell to it. Methane does not have odor. You would think, Oh, methane smells. No right? It doesn’t. She’s got high levels of methane, and it was causing issues in her home. And she, oddly enough, was having some health issues because there was so much methane in her home’s air that it was creating issues. And literally everybody else walked in and said, you need an iron filter, you need a drinking water system. And our water specialist stuck with her and had a test run, a very specific test going, this is weird, I’m going to see if there’s methane in the water. He was brilliant to do that because they came back two different manufacturers went, wow, that’s really high. She’s been experiencing this for a number of years, so it takes a company that’s going to walk with you, not walk away.

Yeah, I presume this is just a shot in the dark, but I presume her situation is close to a farm. Or you think methane sort of thing?

Yeah, right. She is out in the country. She’s out near water. There are ponds and lakes nearby. Other parts of the country have experienced methane, we’ve not seen that, but hers is at such an elevated level that it was creating some health concerns on her end and nobody was really supporting her that it was coming from her water and until our water specialist was in there and really listened and paid attention, looked and said, yep, let’s keep digging. And then came up with that idea and ran the test and got the results back. It’s life changing for her, literally life changing.

Well, there could be a life changing solution just waiting for you if you were to take the first step. Click the link to Gordon Water Systems’ website here in the show notes for this episode of Gordon Water Wisdom and start the process of understanding what’s happening with your water. And then you have the option for a whole house system if that’s what you think you need, and they can confirm that if you need them to or whatever the solution is. Gordon Water Systems has been at it for 50 years and can help you with these vexing problems, perhaps, but also the ones that are most common. These are the ones they deal with on a regular basis. Tom and his team are ready to help, so this is why we call it Gordon Water Wisdom. It’s a lot of wisdom in this one and obviously some unconventional solutions that you’ve had to come up with. So these are the things that you’re working with on a regular basis. And folks, you can take advantage of that knowledge and that wisdom.

Until next time. Thank you, Tom.

Thank you, Richard.