LESLIE: Barry in Texas is having an issue with a water heater at his home. What can we do for you today?
BARRY: Oh, yes. I bought a tankless hot water heater and installed it and had two tanks – 50 gallon hot water tanks – and combined it into one tankless system.
TOM: OK.
BARRY: And ever since I did that, I’m getting a sediment buildup throughout all my faucets throughout the house and basically I think from the hot water side, I’m getting a sediment that’s being generated. Did I do something wrong or can I put something in line to improve it?
TOM: Have you ever had a hard water problem, Barry?
BARRY: No. Never have …
TOM: Hmm.
BARRY: … until I installed this tankless unit.
TOM: Well, the tankless unit would not cause a hard water problem but it might cause it to show up and become more obvious because what happens, if you have too many minerals inside the water floating about, it tends to stick to the inside of the tankless water heater.
BARRY: Oh.
TOM: And I wonder if what you are seeing is some of that that’s clogging and then sort of breaking off and showing up in your faucets.
BARRY: It could be, yes. I had I guess a lot of – the reason why I went for the tankless, because I thought my tank heater, hot water heaters, had a lot of sediment in the bottom of it and I would drain them, you know – at least flush out the bottom of the tanks every six months.
TOM: Mm-hmm.
BARRY: But now, like I said, I’m just getting a lot of sediment directly to my faucets, I think; where before it would probably go – would settle to the bottom of the tank heater.
TOM: Well, you know, there’s a water treatment system out there called EasyWater and the reason I point these guys out is because they actually did some work with the folks at Rinnai who, of course, are one of the major tankless water heater manufacturers.
BARRY: Mm-hmm.
TOM: And they found that with the EasyWater system, they dramatically cut back on the amount of deposits, hard water deposits, that were forming in the units and throughout the house. And this system is more effective, we think, than the chemical-based and salt-based systems because it’s electronic. Basically, what this does is it’s mounted on the main water pipe and it forces the minerals in the water to lose their electrostatic charge.
LESLIE: It like reverse-magnetizes them.
TOM: Sort of. And then when they don’t have that charge, they don’t stick to the piping, they don’t stick to water heaters, they don’t stick to other things; they just basically flow right through to the drain.
BARRY: Oh, got it. OK.
TOM: So you might want to take a …
LESLIE: And it’s really easy to install.
TOM: Yeah. You might want to take a look at that. It’s at EasyWater.com and they have a 90-day guarantee so if it doesn’t work, you can send it back.
BARRY: So it’s like a magnet that’s installed …
TOM: No, it’s not magnetic. It’s electronic. It sends a frequency through the wall of the pipe and into the water and, as a result, the minerals will lose their electrostatic charge.
LESLIE: They push away from one another.
TOM: Right. They don’t stick.
BARRY: OK. I’ll check it out.
TOM: Alright. Good luck with that home improvement project, Barry. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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