WATCHING THE TREATMENT TRENDS!

Over the years, many treatment technologies have tried to break -in: new gimmicks, new claims, new brands. Overall the industry moves like a big ocean liner, slow and steady, and mass wins out over the smaller and less obvious.

When choosing water treatment equipment you want to look for a product with a good reputation and track record and that is in common use and readily available in the marketplace (so you can be confident parts, warranty, and service will be around for a long time for your system).

UVs, RO's and filter housings with changeable filters in common sizes, and fittings are the "go-to" systems for the vast majority of island homes.

More recent trends and developments we are watching are: Whole-house automatic ultra filtration systems or UF Systems (as a substitute to prefilters and UV) ; engineered sand automatic backwashing filters (as a substitute to prefilter cartridges); undersink UF systems (as a substitute to POU - RO's)

As we see more evidence of these systems in use in areas with water conditions similar to ours, we may see them installed in homes here more often. The economics and long-term availability of parts and supplies are the final determining factors in most cases.

Power outages and resetting a beeping UV . . .

On this island, we often get power outages, flickers or blips that may cause a UV power supply to come back on beeping, or the lamp won't power up properly and be alarming. With many of the newer models of UV this won't be an issue, but with some of the older systems, or just with the idiosyncracies of the Hydro feed to your house, you may need to deal with this each time.

If beeping or UV lamp out after power is restored, try the following steps:

1. Unplug UV at outlet and wait 10 long seconds.


2. Then, while pressing down reset button of UV power supply (if it has one), plug UV back in and wait for the following (depending on UV power supply model): solid beep and then it silences, or solid beep and the words on LED display "reSET". As soon as this occurs, take finger off reset button.


3. The beeping should stop and lamp should light up. If it does not, it may be that the power supply has been damaged from the outage, or more rarely, the UV lamp is burnt out.


4. Contact your service technician to confirm problem.

To protect your UV power supply and lamp function, it is always advised that no other fairly heavy power-using appliances (e.g. jet pump or centra-vac) be on the same plug or circuit, and that the outlet be GFCI and also have a plug-in style surge protector on it too.

If any past reasons or suspicions of unsafe water, you will need to sanitize with chlorine and/or thoroughly flush your water lines after power is restored and your UV is confirmed operational.