When you’ve done your homework to identify your water quality issues, researched the treatment options and found a trusted installer, it would be easy to assume that your water problems should be over. When you’ve had your new system installed, and your water now looks, smells and tastes great, you’re likely to be understandably happy. Unfortunately, with the right circumstances, the best scenario can create a temporary deviation.
Considerations
Unfortunately, even if you’ve done your research, there are other considerations to ensure that you improve your water quality. Poor water quality can not only impact your water aesthetics, but it can also cause a number of issues within your plumbing system. It can leave deposits that accumulate inside your pipes and fixtures including your hot water tank. These deposits will also include all of the contaminants carried in the water. The more untreated water that has passed through your plumbing, the more contaminants will have been deposited inside your system.
Once you’ve installed a properly chosen treatment system, the treated water will have different properties compared to your raw water. Under the right circumstances, your treated water can go from great after the installation to worse than it was before. This can be a common problem, and you should be aware of this before installation. If you’re not aware of this potential issue, you may wonder why your water treatment system can work immediately and then appear to stop working.
Why Would Water Get Worse?
Since water is a natural solvent, it is not hard to imagine why your water quality may get worse after installing a treatment system. Your treated water will have new properties, and this will dissolve the contaminants in the deposits left by the untreated water. These newly dissolved contaminants will cause your water to be bad or worse than before the installation. This situation has nothing to do with the brand or type of your new water treatment system.
Addressing the Situation
You can verify that your water problem is the result of your treatment system is cleaning the plumbing. You should test your water at three points to compare the results. Test your water before treatment, immediately after the treatment and at a tap downstream of where the problem is obvious. You should notice that the water after treatment is a better quality than both the water at the tap and the untreated water.
Your water problems may be worse or better depending on the nature of the deposits in your plumbing and the amount of water passed through your pipes.
If your home is new, you’re not likely to have experienced this problem as there may not have been sufficient volume of water or time to create a substantial contaminant deposit.
Your water problems may not appear immediately, as there needs to be enough time for the new treated water to soften and dissolve the contaminant accumulation. This will allow the contaminants to be removed from your plumbing system. With sufficient time and water use, the plumbing will be cleaned, and the problem will go away.
Contact your local water treatment company for any water treatment issues.