June 5, 2015:  Thoughts to the start of the summer months

A drought in California and Arsenic in our water in Arizona..

There are many folks living in California who are having severe water problems because of a lack of water and those living in Texas are having severe water problems because of excess water.  Doesn't that make you wonder why sometimes we never get things right?  There are icebergs melting in the cold climes adding water to the oceans and we have politicians running around talking about how we have global warming, scientists saying that for the next few years we are going to have global cooling!  What is the end result?  Who knows...progress causes everyone to scratch their heads and say huh?

Here in our Arizona community we have a problem with Arsenic:

Our community is serviced by a water company who has been trying to make it next to impossible to do business with them.  Under an agreement with the officials at the state's attorney general's office the water company agreed to provide potable drinking water during the lull of when they put in a large water removal plant to take the arsenic out of the customers water.  That won't happen until May 2016 which is their deadline and they are always waiting until the last minute to get things done.  Don't you wonder where they get their water? 

We went to Home Depot to get an Arsenic filter for our own water rather than go to the office of the water company every day and get 1 gallon of water per person at a set time and sign in when you get the water.  The other problem is that they are giving the water out from behind closed doors!  Yes, they put the water system they have into a closed room, no one can see what they are doing, and you cannot question if the water is good or not. 

The Brita Water system we got is for under the sink.  We replaced a leaky Culligan system and the cost differential was not too much than to get the parts from Culligan.  Problems we had with the new system were discovered after our handy-man installed the system.  It seems that there is a little gadget called a water restrictor which the instruction booklet says is a must do in order to make the system function.  Well, we had this running for some time and nothing was happening!  The water was not going into the pressure tank, the water was not flowing from the faucet, and we could not stand the noise.  So at about 3 am in the morning we got up and turned off the water flowing into the drain!  Read many of the YouTube comments and the videos which had people talking about their methodology of installation and came to the conclusion that first thing in the morning we would  correct some of the problems. 

Our fix..which worked!  Put some air in the pressure tank.  You use a bicycle pump!  Check if the restrictor valve was installed.  We put the air in and installed the restrictor valve which had been put in the box for safe keeping? (Only the handyman knows why it need to be there rather than in the system).  Right away the water filled the tank!  Right away the noisy flow of water was eliminated! Now we go through the steps of purging the system of particles which are cast off by the filters when first installed.  We have only one more time to do this and we then can turn on the line to the ice maker in the refrigerator.  Oh Happy Day!

I have said enough today!  More in a few days.