Being from Hawaii, I was spoiled with soft water. I had never seen a water softener and didn’t know what one did. We would always drink straight from the faucet and only bought bottled water for the beach or our son’s baseball games.
When I moved to Texas 6 years ago, tap water was a whole new disappointing experience. My family and I were faced with the task of buying a water softener, which didn’t come with our house by the way, and we had no idea where to start. Not only were we dealing with bad tasting water, we knew that our pipes and appliances would be clogged up with minerals if we didn’t invest in a softener. We ended up buying one online and installing it in our garage.
One day a few years later, tiny brown plastic spheres started coming out of our faucets and shower heads and appearing in the toilet tanks! What in the world happened? After some research online, we realized our pressure regulator on our water main blew out because of a peak of high pressure from the city water system. The surge of water entered our softener and shot the amber resin beads all throughout our entire house’s plumbing! Wow, we had a big mess to clean up and we had to do it fast. The company online we bought our softener from said they could do nothing to help except for advice over the phone. We wished we had bought the softener locally, so we could get some face to face help. We ended up flushing out our own plumbing and replacing the amber resin beads in our softener ourselves. It was a long arduous process.
Lessons we learned? One, the city will always have a publicized extra-large range of pressure posted so that they are not liable for blow outs. Have a good quality pressure regulator. Lesson two? Buy your softener from someone local so you can call for help! Fidelis Plumbing can help you with all your water purification and plumbing needs. Our qualified and personable Plumbers can help you identify the problem and efficiently fix it. 800-371-1910
