This week, Gerry Bulfin joins me to talk about water filtration in a way that actually makes sense. Instead of chasing the “best” filter, we break down how to think about your water based on what’s in it, whether you’re on city or well water, and what problems you’re trying to solve.

We discuss common issues like chlorine, hard water, iron, and bacteria, along with how things like old pipes or mineral buildup can impact both your home and your health. We also walk through the most common filtration options and when they actually make sense, so you can stop guessing and choose something that fits your situation.

If you want help simplifying this even further, you can download my free Water Testing & Filtration Guide here: https://www.christabiegler.com/watertestingfiltration

The Clean Water Store is also offering listeners 15% off water testing or whole house systems. Use code LESSSTRESSED15 at checkout and you’ll be automatically entered to win a Portable Stainless Steel Gravity Water Filter with UV Purification (a $230 value).

KEY TAKEAWAYS:
• There is no one-size-fits-all water filter
• City water can pick up contaminants after it leaves the plant
• Hard water causes buildup, appliance damage, and stubborn residue
• Iron and manganese are common and affect both water and hair
• Activated carbon works well for chlorine but not everything
• Reverse osmosis is one of the most comprehensive options for drinking water
• Testing your water helps you avoid guessing and overspending

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ABOUT GUEST:
Gerry Bulfin is a Water Quality Association Master Water Specialist and licensed Water Treatment Operator with nearly four decades of experience helping homeowners across the US figure out what's in their water and what to do about it. He founded the Clean Water Store in 1986 and his team is known for giving straight, no-commission advice — they will talk you out of a system if you do not need one. 

WHERE TO FIND GUEST:
Website: https://www.cleanwaterstore.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cleanwaterstore/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/cleanwaterstore

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
More Links + Quizzes: https://www.christabiegler.com/links

SPONSOR:
Thank you to Jigsaw Health for being such a great sponsor. 😎 Use code LESSSTRESSED10 anytime for 10% off!

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Gerry Bulfin: So when you're adding chlorine into water that has organic material in it, you can have chlorine byproducts that are on a municipal level, heavily regulated, like cancer causing and all that. So a lot of people do try to stay away from chlorine if they can.

[00:00:13] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stress life. On the show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:06] Christa Biegler, RD: Alright, today on the Less Stressed Life I have Gerry Bulfin and I wanted to give a little prerequisite or a little bit of a background on why I invited him here. I've actually been recommending his company for a long time without them really knowing it because everyone is looking for this one size fits all, or what do I do for water or air and all of these things.

And with the rise of stress on the body or dis-ease, I thought it would be great to just take a big wide picture at some of these huge topics that are big levers for us to pull. So for today, so we did radon recently, we've done air quality a number of times, but we haven't really gotten into water and that's because it's sometimes hard to find someone to talk about this top.

I wanted to find someone who really knows what they're talking about and I feel like Jerry is the right guy. He is the Water Quality Association. Master water specialist. He's got some other certifications I'm gonna ask him about and a water treatment operator. But really, he founded the Clean Water Store, which is like clean water store.com in 1986.

So can you believe that was almost 40 years ago to help homeowners solve well in city water issues. And so with these decades of experience, he offers really practical advice to protect health and water quality. I was just asking him before I hit record if they had updated their website because it is so helpful and so clear, I feel.

But today I really wanted to dig into what are some of these things that we may not know are going on in our water and how do we sort, even self decode and come up with what the right treatment plan is, depending on our own situation, our budget, et cetera. So thank you so much for coming on today, Gerry.

[00:02:40] Gerry Bulfin: Thanks, Christa. That's really great to be here. 

[00:02:43] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Okay.

Let's jump into this topic of, people wanna say, what's the best kind of water filtration I can get? And everyone, I think anyone who's dealt with this at all would say it depends on what you're trying to filter.

And so very often, what are we trying to filter? Is it chemicals, minerals, pathogens? What are some of the big buckets of what we're looking to filter? And if maybe we do want to separate it into in city or just in general, big picture, first of all with testing water overall and how you decided to maybe dedicate your life's work to this after being in it for a while.

[00:03:20] Gerry Bulfin: Yeah, that's a good point. So basically it does break down into two main buckets and that a lot of folks, they really are after aesthetic. Improvement of their water. A lot of folks, they're not even concerned at all or think about the health impact, although that's definitely getting more common.

So if you think about it, say someone has like water that's causing stains or leaving spots, or maybe they have corrosive water that's corroding their fixtures or plumbing, or maybe they have really bad odor to the water, or even if it's city water, they might have the water's too chlorinated.

They don't like the smell of it. So basically you have an aesthetic issue of like, how can I improve the water? So it's, does what I need it to do, make my clothes come out clean, I don't have lots of spots on everything. And then you have other folks where, other situations where actually their water doesn't have any aesthetic issues, but they may be concerned or they have real issues with something they can't see or taste such as arsenic or nitrate or the PFAS forever chemicals.

So it really breaks down into, aesthetic issues versus health issues. Then also a lot of folks just wanna treat both. Okay, cool. And then we're talk about whole house systems and then also point of use they're not concerned about the showering of the water. They're really concerned just what they're drinking and they're not gonna drink the other water.

That's another. Bucket 

[00:04:47] Christa Biegler, RD: and I wanted to clarify something on why I invited you specifically and why I use your website as a resource quite often is there's not a huge number of water testing companies that I found. There's probably quite a few, but not a giant number, but you offer quite an array of prices as well.

So for example, you could start to test or look at what's going on in your well water for around $50, which I think is unless people know what they're really doing, it's exceptional. And so it allows people to really start to get an idea of it. So I really appreciated that. Because very often there's an argument in the overall health space or doing, we, when we talk about certain things in the home, you shouldn't have the same person testing that's fixing, but you're really just trying to connect people to the right thing overall is how I see it. Let's talk about how you do connect people to the right thing. I wanna talk about some of the specific issues in the two essential class. I think the two classes of water, which is well in city water overall, which one is simpler?

Which one would, should we start with? 

[00:05:51] Gerry Bulfin: City water in a way is a lot simpler because most municipalities publish their analysis from their own labs. Now, of course some people might be. Suspicious of it or don't trust it, but usually it's fairly accurate, but also it's testing the water at the plant.

So another complicated issue, or another thing that throw out there is that a lot of people live on like corroding distribution systems. So they're piping that's leads to their home is old and the infrastructure has been updated in 40, 50 years or more sometimes. So they're getting clean water, leaving the plant, but bad water at the house.

So that's one issue. But the, as far as testing on wells, you really don't know what you're dealing with. Say if you, especially if you move to and you have a new well. So it's a good idea at least to get a, what we would say, a full panel, like a complete analysis done at least once when you're starting out to say, oh, I can rule this out.

I don't have arsenic or other naturally occurring contaminants that are gonna have, be a health issue. So you'd get generally we do more like pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals in addition to all the minerals. If it's well water as opposed to city water. You might just wanna know, look at their consumer confidence report, see what you're dealing with.

And then you can also get a simpler test that you can do at your home to find out, measure the actual hardness, chlorine levels, that kind of thing. 

[00:07:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. So let's talk about what are some of the things that get picked up in the piping? If the piping is old, if it leaves. I think you make a great point.

I've never heard anyone really talk about very often is it leaves clean and that's where the testing's coming from, but it picks up things along the way. So what are some of the things that would pick up from that pipe along the way that would contaminate the water? 

[00:07:38] Gerry Bulfin: The biggest health problem is lead.

So in other words, if folks have piping from before the mid sixties, they could either have lead pipe in their, copper pipe that's soldered with lead in their home. No one has lead pipes in their home, but there is some still and they're in the process of trying to replace it, but it's a big project.

There is some lead at the street level where the water comes into the house, and if the water isn't corrosive and it's scale forming, in other words, it's leaving deposits on the pipe, then the lead may not be maybe fine. In other words, , it's not good that it's there, but you might want to, it's not gonna add lead into the water.

So in fact the municipalities are required to do lead and copper testing out in the distribution system to. Solve this issue or to overcome this problem. But so there's lead. And then the other one is a lot of rusty pipes. That's a big thing. So these different municipalities and water utilities have to periodically flush their pipes and do testing and tests for coliform bacteria out in their distribution systems.

So when they do that, they often stir up a lot of mucky stuff like sediment, rust, that kind of thing. But it's either some kind of like sediment, rust, mineral deposits, or it's lead 

[00:08:56] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:08:56] Gerry Bulfin: Would be the main issues. 

[00:08:57] Christa Biegler, RD: And I feel like what keeps coming up in my mind is that even though you mentioned that you should do the whole comprehensive test on maybe a, at least once, things could pop up whenever, and I've seen, and I'll probably interject some health.

Notes in here of why we pursue water very often is sometimes I've seen recurrent e coli show up in people when it really should be resolved. Like people have been treated well for it. And so it's is there an issue in the water? And very often we like track back to that. Would e coli be one of the causes of smell?

I'll probably go about it from this angle. If we're starting to consider, you probably can't really what's causing, it's usually sulfur, right? That's causing the smell, but it's not bacteria made that grow. If you have smelly water, what does that usually mean?

And is there any way to tell besides testing that you've got too much bacteria or e coli or some kind of other coliform in the water? 

[00:09:54] Gerry Bulfin: The coliform, you can only do it by testing. There's no way to taste it or smell it absolutely. There is of course labs. Sometimes the local county will do free coliform testing if you're suspicious.

They give you a sterile bottle and you can do it, or you can, they do have, in-home test kit down that are not terribly expensive. 20, $30. You can do a coliform test and also test for e co y. Yourself. But the thing with the odor is a lot of times on a skinny back to city water, and this could be true on small community systems too, the water's heavily chlorinated, say when it leaves the plant, but it's such a wide system.

By the time the it reaches your neighborhood, there's no chlorine left in the water. And if there can be bacteria living in the pipes in a biofilm, which is very common and something that municipalities fight all the time, they're trying to eliminate biofilm growth in their pipes. And that's why they keep a chlorine residual in the water.

But the thing is that it can go away and then you can start to get these different types of bacteria, sulfur sulfate, reducing bacteria where you basically, it feeds on. Either iron or sulfur in the water. And as a byproduct, it gives off this hydrogen sulfide gas, which is that rotten egg smell. So we had a lot of folks on city water that report the rotten egg smell too.

And particularly they'll say, it's really bad when I come back from vacation or if I'm out of town for, we gotta come back. In other words it needs time for the bacteria to live and produce in their little biofilm in the pipe and create these odors. 

[00:11:32] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Super interesting.

I can't imagine how much time your customer service spends on counseling on what you really need for your water. So that's super interesting. What does it mean, you said that's why they keep alkaline residual in the water. What does that mean? 

[00:11:45] Gerry Bulfin: No, they keep a chlorine residual. So in other words, they add chlorine in the water and they have to put a high level chlorine.

And then as soon as it hits the water, it starts to combine and kill bacteria. And you basically degrades or it breaks down where it's just chloride, which is like an harmless salt or mineral. So you've got a situation where you know people that are getting super chlorinated 'cause they live down the street for the tree implant.

And then you have people like a mile out that are, have very low chlorine residual with the operator's job is to make sure there's a chlorine residual throughout the whole system. So they don't have a problem with bacteria growth. 

[00:12:23] Christa Biegler, RD: So what does the filtration, if someone tests and finds they have very high chlorine and they can smell it in their city water, what is the filtration substrate that's usually used for chlorine and does it work on other things as well?

[00:12:36] Gerry Bulfin: Yes. So the real common one and the most effective one is activated carbon. So there's different kinds of activated carbon but generally we use a coconut shell carbon. And it's, and the best way is just in the least expensive way, is just to get a small tank of it, like a, maybe eight or 10 inches wide by few feet, two or three feet tall.

And then as the water flows through it. It takes out the chlorine residual in your house, and then some municipalities add ammonia to the water too. Again, it's to fight this issue of the chlorine in the distribution system, so you're getting chloramines. And so that's one thing in on city water, we always encourage folks to check with their local.

You can see it on their the water treat, their municipality site. , Is it chloramine or is it just chlorine? Because if it's just chlorine, then you can, which is a little more common, then you can use a little less expensive coconut shell activated carbon and it lasts for years. We're on Chlor when our, I'm on city water now and in our area.

I've been on, have my carbon system now going on seven years, and it still works fine. It, and it's just activated carbon and it does backwash and clean itself once a month, but it's just, it's taking out all the chlorine as it comes into the house. But if you lived up in the Bay Area, like in San Francisco and there's some areas, of course, all across the country that use chloramines, then you, we'd use a different kind of carbon that specifically addresses the chloramines, which is the catalytic carbon that works on the chloramines.

So you get that removed too. Yeah, it basically activated carbon is a real cheap way to go and you can also just get a cartridge, but a cartridge needs to be changed frequently. So it's very cheap to buy it up front, but then you're peeing a lot every couple months to change the cartridge for your whole, if you're doing it for your whole house.

[00:14:26] Christa Biegler, RD: Super helpful. Okay, let me go back to something we already discussed, which is lead what filters that is. Does carbon also filter that? What do you do if you are having, you might have lead in the water. 

[00:14:38] Gerry Bulfin: So for whole house systems it's difficult. They do make, then you do have to get a type of either a cartridge and they have whole house lead removal systems or a special resin.

But lead is more of an issue with your pipes. So if you are in the house and you're getting lead in your house, then you might have be having corrosive water that's CRO in your pipes. And if the joints were installed before, like the. They had to be super old 'cause they don't, haven't used lead in pipes for many years.

But there are homes that still exist, so you'd more want to treat the corrosion problem and prevent the lead from corroding. But generally what we recommend is point of use for reverse osmosis. So in other words, under the sink, you would have a reverse osmosis system that combines a membrane with carbon and a couple other filters.

And then that way you get purified water out of one tap. And that's generally the cure for a lot of problems. Like a lot of these issues with heavy metals, PFAS, you can treat it throughout house, but you can also treat it at one sink and have your cooking and drinking water remove the lead at one sink.

[00:15:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. And if you're, doesn't the fridge filter typically come from the sink anyway, most of the time, or like under that. So it would technically address those? Yes, 

[00:15:54] Gerry Bulfin: you can definitely hook up your ro. You're under sink, RO to your fridge 

[00:15:59] Christa Biegler, RD: too. Okay. Okay, cool. 

[00:16:00] Gerry Bulfin: Yeah. 

[00:16:00] Christa Biegler, RD: So we just talked about smell in the water and about bacteria as well, and sulfur.

Let's talk about what you think is happening if you see scale forming. So like white stuff in glasses or on certain , where does scale often occur overall? 

[00:16:17] Gerry Bulfin: So many parts of the country, , it depends on their water source. Like again, I could throw out the bay, the San Francisco Bay area, and also New York City too, as a place that use surface water.

So they're using really clean water. It's surface water from alpine reservoirs or lakes, and then the, so the water's low in hardness, low in to dissolve solids, whereas many systems use groundwater or a mix of groundwater and surface water. Where the water is full of calcium carbonate or limestone, in other words, it has hardness minerals in it that are not toxic but at all, but it's just a nuisance 'cause it can scale up your pipe, wreck your water heater make it harder to dissolve soap.

And so you, a lot of the detergents and shampoos, conditioners, they're all designed to work with hard water because they have like natural softeners or not like chemical softeners in them of various types to make the water so it can work, make the soap, can work on your hair or laundry or whatever.

So anyway, so basically it depends on what the level of hardness is. This is another thing 'cause the standard way to treat. Hardness is with a water softener, which has resin beads in this. Again, it's like a tank that maybe is, eight, 10 inches wide, buys three to four feet tall, and it uses salt, so it regenerates with brine.

So once every week or whatever, it counts how many gallons you've used in the house in the middle of the night, it turns on, sucks brine out of your brine tank and then basically cleans the resin beads. But what, when the, when it's softening, it's pulling out the calcium, magnesium, and it's putting in a sodium ion.

So it's an I, that's why they call it ion exchange. It's space exchanging your minerals, your calcium, magnesium for sodium, which then doesn't appear as spots. Of course, it does add sodium though, so that's another people don't, some people not only, they don't like to deal with salt, but they also. I don't want sodium if they're on a sodium restricted diet or whatever.

It doesn't add that much sodium like if you had pretty hard water, you might only get say 150 milligrams per liter. So if you drink a liter of water, you'd get a, quart of water, you'd get another couple hundred milligrams per day. So it's really not a huge thing, but it's just, so a lot of folks would like to get away from water softening.

So there's another class of, we call them salt-free conditioners. And they basically, when they work they break down the mineral scale into crystals that then don't stick to pipes. But the problem is that these salt-free conditioners basically they keep your pipes clean and keep your water heater from scale buildup.

But you can't tell the difference as far as spots. So in other words, it doesn't remove anything. So if the water evaporates on the shower door or on a surface, it's still gonna be hard water. So that's the problem. That's a lot of them are way oversold. Use a salt-free water softener.

You don't need to get a soften anymore. You can get a one of these, salt-free softeners. And it's really, it doesn't really soften the water, it just protects the water from building and the pipe. So what we reuse, recommend, we say, oh, how hard is your water? If it's really unfortunately you probably need a water softener.

Just try to get this, the one that used the least amount of salt and water. And then you can put an RO under the sink. So it doesn't hurt you to brush your teeth, drink the water in the bathroom, whatever. But as far as the water, the sodium goes. But if for purified water, then you have one place at your sink to get pure water.

[00:19:49] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, that does make sense. And from health implications, backing up a little bit, we use a certain type of hair tissue mineral analysis where I have for about five or six years in practice. And, it's very common that people don't know what I mean when we say hard water. And so hard water is high in calcium and magnesium.

It's not necessarily considered iron is just calcium magnesium Jerry? 

[00:20:11] Gerry Bulfin: Yeah. 

[00:20:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. From a health standpoint, if we have a lot of calcium that's not being used, it can impact thyroid function sometimes. And that's important because it can slow motility and cause recurrent gut issues.

It can be really sneaky 'cause it doesn't only show up on lab testing other lab testing or doesn't show up on thyroid testing, but it can be a cause of recurrent symptoms. So I think that is worth mentioning why I am interested in this topic overall. Now I do have a, is it called A-T-D-S-A total dissolved Solids meter from your company.

I think that they're, $30 to buy individually. But you can get 'em as a kit even cheaper. And I let this darn kit sit for a long time, and then I sat down and did it as a science experiment with my kids one day, which was great and fun and wonderful. And I think you'll be able to tell me, I think it said, they have, or whoever the regulatory body is, it says you really should have less than 500 TDS or total dissolved solids per.

Whatever, like however it reads. Reads it. 

[00:21:09] Gerry Bulfin: Yeah. Parts per million. 

[00:21:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Mine was 4 97. 

[00:21:12] Gerry Bulfin: Oh, wow. 

[00:21:13] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Mine's really, I'm on an aquifer of groundwater and it's lovely, but it's quite hard. And I had a washer one time, I think it was five or six years old, and the repair guy took it out and he said, Hey, I just need to call you.

It looks like there's cement in your washer. Because of that hard water buildup. And I like stories because they can. Sometimes it's oh, okay, maybe I do need to do something. I have a husband who for some reason, doesn't like water softener. So it's been a bit of a potent bone of contention, but about the sodium I think for him, he just hates that.

It feels like you can't get the soap off your body when you put it on. That's the common 

[00:21:46] Gerry Bulfin: complaint for sure. 

[00:21:46] Christa Biegler, RD: That's the common complaint. Now, the no salt softener is really just another carbon filter. I noticed it on your website. I hadn't seen it labeled like that until I just looked at your website today and saw that there was a lot of new things there.

[00:21:57] Gerry Bulfin: No it's a type of beads. There's different ways to do it, but this one, the one that we found the most effective, 'cause we tried so many different kinds over the years, that it's a bead and there's it's hard to explain, but when the water flows through there, these beads fluidized inside the tank, and then that's where those crystals form and so it has nothing to do with carbon.

It's a different type of resin and it does. It doesn't last forever. That's another problem. A lot of times folks think they're set it and forget it forever, but they, the media inside does need to be changed, but it's every five years or so. But yeah, it's a different, it is a different type, but if you have hard water, you won't really notice much difference.

But you wouldn't notice in the washing machine, the water heater, the appliances. That's for sure. Yeah. That's, it works on that. But as far as the mint, the sliminess or the slipperiness of the soft water, you can also blend the water. That's what we encourage folks to do. In other words, you don't need zero soft water.

You can adjust it so your water isn't zero soft, but it's not, it's less soft, less hard. Yeah. In words, you can add a little bit hardness in it, right On the softener. You can adjust it so you, you make your water a little hard. That kind of helps with that. Can't get the soap off.

Yeah. But if you find, if you soap down and you find your rinse off, you find it feels like soap, but it's not, you don't have soap on there. 

[00:23:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. Okay, let's talk about brown rust stains. What is that usually indicative of? 

[00:23:24] Gerry Bulfin: So brown rust stains are a definitely from iron or manganese.

So you've got naturally Korean iron. It's one of the most common elements in the earth's crust is iron. And then you also have manganese. They're both stainers and raw. And iron leaves a orange stain and manganese leaves more of a black or brown stain. And they're usually naturally occurring, but they can certainly occur in pipes.

And so you get a situation where you have an old corroded, galvanized pipe. Galvanized pipe is still common in a lot of systems, especially old homes or the pipe leading to it. And that can corrode and put rust in your water. 

[00:24:05] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. If the soil is red. So we, where I've got a part of my state has red soil, right?

Like the, there's mountains and whatnot, and that usually would. A pretty good indicator that there's gonna be more iron or manganese in the water, right? 

[00:24:21] Gerry Bulfin: Absolutely. Yeah. 

[00:24:22] Christa Biegler, RD: Typically, yeah. 

[00:24:22] Gerry Bulfin: Iron is very common. 

[00:24:24] Christa Biegler, RD: This one's a little bit trickier to filter. I find when I looked into filtering iron. So from a health standpoint, now this is where this particular test I was talking about, it's helpful because it's really inexpensive and sometimes it's like.

My husband and I had the highest irons in hair tissue that I had ever had. Of all who, the clients. I was like this isn't good. This is coming from , I believe this other water with the red dirt, the high iron, et cetera. The issue here is that for humans, they don't clear iron very efficiently.

So if you're absorbing a lot of iron topically, it can be really hard on detoxification systems. You were actually already talking about iron feeding bacteria, so it can be another cause or reason that people have recurrent gut issues or dysbiosis, which can look like a million symptoms but also just really stressful to your natural detoxification systems.

For women, they lose iron through menstruation, but if they're not menstruating or you're not the only other option is really giving blood. It doesn't, it just, you don't clear it very well health wise. So I think this one's pretty important, but the filtration for iron is a little bit interesting. I find that it's, more specialized, right? Like it's harder to find iron filtration. 'cause anytime I'd ever looked for shower filters, et cetera. And I wanna mention also, some of these particular minerals I think are really related to hair breakage as well, especially the calcium. I don't know if you, I don't know.

You, you were a guy without any hair that I'm talking 

[00:25:48] Gerry Bulfin: to. It happened me a long time ago. Yeah. Actually that's one of our biggest things that we joke about is a the husband will call in and say, oh yeah, our water's not that bad. But I wanna, I'm thinking about Guinea fix, Lees little stains. And then the wife, they'll talk to the wife and.

And she'll go, I'm, I can't get my hair done. 'cause my hairdresser says that there's metals that are ruining my hair and if you don't fix this, I'm outta here. In other words, it's two different motivations depending on if they're calling their hair. So it does affect hair color a lot as far as if there's iron or manganese in the water.

And definitely it you do, if you had iron coming into the house, it wasn't from a distribution system. In other words, it wasn't like the water that the iron that comes off of old pipes is rust. So it's like literally rust in the water, it's not dissolved in the water. Whereas the iron that you see coming from a well is usually mostly dissolved iron.

The water looks clear, but it tastes terrible and is full of iron. Then when it sits in the toilet tank or in the wash machine, then it turns into rust by oxidation. So you have to basically oxidize the iron with an iron filter, and there's different kinds of iron filters. But basically it has different filter media inside there that when the iron that's in the water hits, it immediately turns into rust a particle that then, you know, once or twice a week in the middle of the night, it turns on and just washes all that mucky stuff, the orange stuff out to drain, and then it's good to go again.

So you can get iron filter lasts for many years and it just has special iron filter media in it that takes out the iron as it comes into the house. 

[00:27:23] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. Yeah. The cabin I'm thinking about that's full of iron, is it the neighbors? And then it goes into a holding tank, which I feel like would be a perfect place for it to become more iron rich from what you just described.

Yeah. And then when I look at the filter, it's totally orange. The regular water filter, it's totally orange. But what is the substrate that you're using? Or you, I don't think you said it. Yes. 

[00:27:44] Gerry Bulfin: So we use, there's filter media that is either manufactured or you can get natural or, but it's usually some type of manganese dioxide.

So it's a manganese dioxide. Manganese, the natural mineral. That they find a real high purity and then they crush it and grate it. And so you end up with this like black sand type media stuff, and then it's very highly oxidizing. So as the water flows in there the iron that's in the water hits it, then turns into rust, but it gets trapped in the media.

And by the time it goes through the whole down to the bottom of the media, it's. Filtered out and yeah, so you can get a little iron filter. You can also get cartridge filters, but generally some kind of small backwash iron filter is the cheapest way to go over time. 'cause it'll, it keeps, takes both dissolved and oxidized rust out.

'cause when you put it in a storage tank first, which is a great way to do it, then the water is being aerated and oxidized naturally. And those things can definitely turn into iron bacteria breeders where you get, not always, but if you look inside the tank and there's slime or there's little hairy stuff growing out from the sides, then that's iron bacteria.

And so yeah, that's if there's a lot of iron bacteria in the water, then we usually inject chlorine or hydrogen peroxide ahead of the iron filter to try to. Kill the iron bacteria. 

[00:29:05] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Okay. So if the filter media is for the iron is a manganese product, what if there is also a lot of manganese in the water?

I forgot about that one. What are you using for filtering that? 

[00:29:17] Gerry Bulfin: That's funny because, so it's not exactly intuitive, but this same filter media, it takes out manganese too. Okay. So it works really well on iron and the manganese, but it doesn't add any manganese into the water. At least it's not supposed to.

[00:29:29] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, cool. 

[00:29:29] Gerry Bulfin: There's different kinds of manufactured media, but that's some kind of particle that's coated with a manganese dioxide. And so there's both coated and non coated. But but yeah, it works really good. We, that's. I dunno if it's half our business, but a lot of our business is iron filtration, 

[00:29:46] Christa Biegler, RD: oh, interesting. I wonder why 

[00:29:47] Gerry Bulfin: it's very common 

[00:29:48] Christa Biegler, RD: wonder 

[00:29:48] Gerry Bulfin: why throughout 

the 

country. Yeah. 

[00:29:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. That's very interesting that it's half of your business maybe because you're easy to find for that kind of filtration and other people are not, I don't know. It's a very unique, whereas I feel like locally people can get water softening potentially, but locally maybe they're not getting iron and manganese filtration, if that makes sense.

I just mentally processing through that as well. So with reverse osmosis under the sink, does that also work for iron or manganese or, and bacteria are not, 

[00:30:22] Gerry Bulfin: so that's really good point. So the problem with the reverse osmosis use the membrane and it's very easy to get fouled. So if you have very hard water.

Very high in minerals or you have iron or manganese, then it fouls the membrane and it just ruins it over not too long. So generally you could use a reverse, it will take it out, but it'd be a pain because every few months, or maybe every, might last a year, you'd have to change the membrane, which normally lasts for many years.

But yeah, so you basically filter the iron out before it comes into the house typically, and then your reverse osmosis can not get fouled, but it just kind depends on the budget and it, the application, in other words. You mentioned you, you like a cabin. So some folks might want to get such an elaborate system.

They might wanna start out with cartridges and something, 'cause they don't live there all the time. They don't need something that's gonna be, but if it was your home and you live all the time, you're doing laundry and all that, you would want to have an iron filter if you had iron. Because a softener won't, that's another thing you mentioned softeners.

Softeners are often sold to remove iron too, because that's what the local water treatment guys mainly try to sell as water softeners. And it's not always, there's a lot of great, water treatment guys out there that are experts but that have iron filters. But that's a problem 'cause the softening resin can get fouled with the iron too.

So we generally don't recommend a softener if you have high iron, better to filter the iron first, then run it through the water soften. 

[00:31:54] Christa Biegler, RD: You mentioned that, you do quite a lot of business around iron filtration or iron manganese filtration. And you ship, all over the US maybe farther.

But do you sell these products and then people locally install them or do you support people to install them? I'm just curious how that works as well. 

[00:32:13] Gerry Bulfin: We're definitely, so this thing did morph into a DIY thing where

so for many years we did install ourselves. We had trucks when guys go out and do it, but in I think it was 2005 or something like that we just switched main just to online to yourself.

So what we're doing is we're shipping the kits, and then people have everything they need to put it together. And then they have a YouTube video and an installation guide. And then they also do, and often call it and talk to our guys. In other words, they'll say, Hey, I need help.

What's going on? And then we can send 'em a link. We could share a screen so we could see what they're seeing on their phone or whatever. We, but basically we're set up to help people do it yourself. And then on the other hand, a lot of folks will hire a plumber, our handyman. In other words, they'll say, I'm gonna hire a plumber.

'cause there's, if it's a lot of plumbing involved, then that's. I hassle for a lot of people, but if it's very simple plumbing, it's amazing. A lot of folks just, it's not that big of a deal. They do it. I don't know if it's 'cause they live in the country or whatever, but even on city water, a lot of people, I'd say most people do install it themselves, but it maybe a third or so.

H higher handyman or plumber.

[00:33:18] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. Okay, so we talked about scale, we talked about brown rust, we talked about smell. What did we miss for some of those diagnostic criteria that you can actually see from the water? 

[00:33:29] Gerry Bulfin: One thing is corrosion. Corrosion is a big problem. A lot of people will see blue stains and they don't know what that's from, but if their copper pipe is dissolving, so in fact, a really good thing to do before you order a water test kit, say you move into a new home, or you're looking to buy a home, or you want to just check out your existing and get water treatment, the first thing to do is to look in your toilet tank.

'cause in your flush tank, unless you have one of the new air tank type, low flows toilets, there's still a lot of people have just the standard toilets out there. It is a reservoir of all your cold water. So all the cold water for however long that thing's been operating, and hardly anyone ever cleans their flush tank.

So it's a good way to, to look at it unless the toilet is new. If you look in there and see blue, then you know you've got copper, corrosion. As an example, or you might look in there and see black, then, you might have manganese or some kind of sediment. Or if you look in there and you see a clean toilet flush tank with just a little bit of sand at the bottom or whatever, then you, it gives you a clue as to what's going on with your water.

But that would be a big thing would be is your pipes, does your pipes have a corrosion issue? 

[00:34:38] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. Cool. Anything else we missed that you can see? Or I guess taste or smell? 

[00:34:47] Gerry Bulfin: it's interesting. So there are a lot of funny smells that come out that's not rotten egg smell and not chlorine.

And this is an issue with climate change as well, because the water, the climate is getting warmer, so the reservoirs are being heated up and so you get. More of these weird smells and I can't name 'em off the top of my head, but it's like a pond smell or an algae smell. And there's different, algae based microorganisms, that are in the water that can give off these funny smells.

And this, the problem for municipalities too, is to combat these smells, particularly in the summer months. So I'd say smell is a big one. Other than that, it's mainly just sediment and like we already talked about the scale and the iron.

[00:35:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. And I, we didn't really talk about the solution for smell, but I did notice on your website, which is a system I have, which is a peroxide system, but some water guys will say put a bleach or chlorine in the tank.

Yeah. And we went with peroxide instead. And I'm not sure how I feel about that. Does the peroxide help with anything else besides the smell bacteria, et cetera?

[00:35:55] Gerry Bulfin: Know it. The peroxide, when you add peroxide into water it quickly dissolves back into oxygen and water. So it's a powerful oxidizer, but it's not doing the same thing that chlorine would do, where it'd kill bacteria in a way. I dunno about you. Like I, as a kid, my mom would put peroxide on a cut or whatever, and that it bubble up. Same. And I don't know if they still do that anymore but anyway, it would it's more of a cleaning the wound. It doesn't, and that strength right on your skin will actually disinfect. But when you're adding chlor hydrogen peroxide into water, it's mainly about killing the odor and making the water fresher in a way you could look at it.

You're adding oxygen into the water and making the water fresher tasting. So it's more of a taste and aesthetic issue rather than. It'll help a little with bacteria. 'cause the bacteria they like to thrive in like a low oxygen environment. But yeah, no peroxide's a good way to go. 'cause then you don't get the chlorine residual.

'cause when you're adding chlorine, it's good. We sell a lot of chlorinators. But the thing is that you're adding sodium hypo chloride. That's what bleach is. Sodium hypo chloride. So think about it, you're adding more sodium into the water. So you get a residual of sodium and there is a problem with chlorine byproducts.

So when you're adding chlorine into water that has organic material in it, you can have chlorine byproducts that are on a municipal level, heavily regulated, like cancer causing and all that. So a lot of people do try to stay away from chlorine if they can. But if you need chlorine, then you can also put in a carbon system and they would take off the chlorine.

So anyway. But that's per peroxide's a good way to go. We like peroxide a lot. The only problem is the cost of peroxide ishmm. The actual peroxide is high, but 

[00:37:32] Christa Biegler, RD: yeah, 

[00:37:33] Gerry Bulfin: you don't use bunch then. Yeah, 

[00:37:35] Christa Biegler, RD: sometimes there's like lots of error built up as well at different times, like if something happens, but that's not really an issue.

I'm looking through some of the different things that you have on your site to just see if I've, I think there's, an endless amount of things that could be discussed here, but some other things that are common. So we talked about chlorine, not so much fluoride. Wouldn't that be the same filtration technically?

Or

[00:38:01] Gerry Bulfin: no, that's a good point. Fluoride is, does is they inject it as a fluoride solution, but when it gets into water, it's a mineral. So it's fluoride like calcium, fluoride. It's found That's typical what it is. And anyway, as we know they do it to prevent dental decay.

But the thing is that to remove fluoride, you need reverse osmosis. There's no practical way. There are whole house fluoride filters, but they're not very effective. They don't last very long, and they're pretty expensive. So people talk to us first. We generally say, yeah, it's not the best thing to filter fluoride through actual house, but you can get a reverse osmosis system then that works really great on fluoride.

Okay. If you want to do all the fluoride Yeah. 

[00:38:42] Christa Biegler, RD: All right. I wanna ask about a couple of these other things. It looks like water has all the interesting random things, right? So acid neutralizers, why would you need an acid neutralizer? 

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[00:40:53] Gerry Bulfin: That is very common. That's a huge part of what we do too, is that, so it's a very common for a lot of wells to have a low pH have acidic water.

So when you mentioned our little water test gets. And the thing is, one of the things that come with it is a really good pH, a way to test pH using drops. So it's very effective. You see a clear collar there. You're not using the pH strips. So that's one thing everyone should know is what the pH of their well water is.

Because if your water is acidic, then that's going to corrode your appliances and your pipes and all that. So it's not good to drink a run acidic water through your house. Yeah. So what we do with that is that typically they get a tank. Of crushed marble. It's pure calcium carbonate.

So here adding calcium carbonate into the water. 'cause usually with acid water, it's usually because it's not coming from a strata that has any calcium in it. So you see it a lot in areas where there's granite or other types of rock where there's not a lot of high calcium rock.

And so basically the neutralizers, when the water runs through them neutralizes the pH to pH of seven or a little more, maybe 7.5. And then it, over time, it dissolves into the water. And then once a year you just get, you have a little bag of the crushed marble. You just add more into it.

[00:42:12] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. How about soda ash system? What would that be for? 

[00:42:17] Gerry Bulfin: And so dash systems are for when the water is so acidic that you can't deal with calcium carbonate, you can't deal with crushed marble. So in that case, for homeowners, it's the only practical way they can deal with super low pH of say, four.

Like normal acid water we run into is six, 5.5 to six pH. But if you get some water, like you might have some like mineral acids from mines, or there could be other reasons why the pH is so low. But basically, the soda actually is basically sodium carbonate. It's almost like baking soda and you dissolve it in water and inject it into the.

And that raised the stage. 

[00:42:53] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. How common are PFAS and nitrates? You mentioned those at the very beginning. We didn't really talk about those. And what does that look like for filtration or correction? Like how common have you seen that on testing? I assume you have lots of years of testing experience with this.

So how common are those, and then what do you do with those? 

[00:43:15] Gerry Bulfin: So for us historically we've sold more nitrate systems because. Nitrate is from agricultural runoff. So you get a nitrogen fertilizers used in huge amounts, and then the water, the soil may be sandy. It's all over the country, but it in our area, it's common, like the growing strawberries, it's the water, soil, sandy, and it, and the nitrate fertilizer goes into the groundwater table.

And then you have high nitrate. So that can be treated either with reverse osmosis or the special nitrate resin, which looks like a water softener, but takes out nitrate. The PFAS is more of a recent thing. It's been around for a long time, but there's a lot more awareness of it and it's tested. The testing of it's tricky.

So it's only recently been where it's a big problem. So it's a big problem on a municipal level. There's literally billions of dollars are gonna be spent on trying to clean it up because all the forever chemicals that they, a lot of it ends up in groundwater, so that's a problem. So PFAS is common.

We do sell whole house PFAS systems. Some of 'em are on city water and a lot, some of 'em are on wells. But it's unusual You wouldn't get A-P-F-A-S system unless you knew you had and there's not. The majority of the water in the US is contaminated PFAS by any means. It's a small part, but it is a big issue.

[00:44:33] Christa Biegler, RD: Okay. Alright. So I wanna talk a little bit about testing and then talking about, how do people select a little bit around budget, longevity, et cetera. But I've been following your website, secretly long enough to know that your testing options have varied and changed a little bit over the years.

I think there's those big categories, so please tell me if I'm wrong, I just wanna make sure that we're catching this rebuild. It's like the categories to me are the minerals, the chemicals like PFAS, et cetera. Minerals, chemicals pathogens.

I guess I'm calling minerals and metals the same. I'm putting them under one. But you're the expert you call it. This is just how I'm bucketing them that we wanna make sure we're looking at. Am I missing anything else? Like you said, metals, if you consider it different so we wanna make sure that our testing encapsulates all these things, plus there's a few, like you said with metals, lead, et cetera.

So it's nice to have that list. So what has been your experience with testing? Because I see that overall you can do some DIY testing for as little as, 50, 80, a hundred dollars up to professional testing for 2 50, 300, which I still think is actually pretty good as I've watched this testing market over the years.

So what has been your experience with testing and why you've changed and why you offer one thing for water versus city water, et cetera. 

[00:45:43] Gerry Bulfin: it's amazing how much it's changed. So when we first started to get a lab test for a full panel of what we call general mineral metal and physical and pesticides and herbicides, you'd be looking at 12, $1,400.

It was very common. People, it's been a fortune on just getting the test. If they had to have it done regularly, it was just really prohibitive. So the new tests are from automated labs where they've worked out a way to. Do more tests at once in automated machines. And and it's all hooked up computers, so it's lowered the cost a lot.

We use a one group called Simple Lab where they've worked with they have a series of labs across the country that they send the samples to. So the process has, that's lowered the cost. And yeah, I would say that it depends on where you're at. If you were in the middle of the mountains and there's no, agriculture nearby you still might want to get a pest side test, but you might not need a pest side test.

Whereas can you imagine you're in Illinois. And your home is right next to a cornfield. You'd probably want to get testing done regularly, and so to see if there's any glyphosate or pesticides or herbicides that are leaked into your well. So it just depends on where you're at. It's like where your location is.

There's problems with, if you're an industrial area or you're near a service station, gas station, that kind of thing, you might want to get that tested. Some folks come to us that are suffering from living in fracking areas where the fracking is caused their well to go bad and they can see it because they were there before the fracking.

The fracking moved in and now they have like various problems with their well. So that requires a different kind of chemical testing where you're testing for petrochemicals, but generally for the average person, if they can afford it, getting the advanced well water tests, which I think. Around three or $400 covers most everything, and it covers the pesticides, herbicides, and bacteria and the general mineral analysis.

Yeah. And like I said, it's a good idea to get, if you're on a at least do it once to see where you're at and if 'cause a lot of people, they, they live in good areas where there isn't really any contamination of their with, weird stuff. It's, it's not a problem, but they, it's good to rule it out.

[00:47:56] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. I'm curious with these fracking areas, which would be any place where they're I guess harvesting oil drilling for oil, et cetera what you said the well gets ruined. What actually seems to happen they're not able to pull water anymore? 

[00:48:09] Gerry Bulfin: So the fracking in theory it's good 'cause it happens at super deep levels, way below what the water table is.

And so normally. It shouldn't cause a problem with the water table. But the other thing is that these turn into like industrial sites where you have big trucks going in and out and lots of activity. And so there is often can be some contamination of the actual well water. And what you get is, and then, or the fracking thing fails.

And in what case, the big problem is methane gas. So in other words, folks will literally get methane gas. Like when they turn on the tap, it spits out all kinds of bubbly stuff. And you could actually put it in a bucket of water and light it. Which I've done that I've filled up, like a bucket of water on site and you could put a match to it.

The methane will get take on fire. So there's methane and there's just like turbidity, cloudiness, it's just like the well got all stirred up because of the drilling. 

[00:49:07] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. Very interesting. I did not know about it, mostly because I'm not, I'm close-ish to those areas. I'm a neighboring state, but I don't know anyone that's happened to personally.

Yeah. Okay. I wanna talk a little bit about how people choose what filtration is right for them. But I think it's more, it's not only the testing, which I think is very key, but it's really, I think before testing, it's how long will I be in this home? How often am I using this water? What else do I have going on?

Maybe for me, this would be a question, what else do I have going on with my health that might be. Majorly impacted by the water that I might want to know. Because often, and I find people, when they're in duress, when they're in dis-ease, when they're in stress around things, overwhelm is naturally occurring intermittently, right?

And so people are like what is the easiest thing? Or can I put a shower filter on? Or all of these things? Or can I do an undery filter? And really when I think through, 'cause for me, this has been an onion to unpack because I think I got into this topic when testing really was less accessible and .

That's frustrating 'cause it's like you run into, that you need to know what's in the water, but it wasn't very accessible. So it was like it just becomes a whole money thing. And so it's okay to one, learn what you need to know in steps as well. But I think those are the things we have to consider.

And so the other thing I wanna mention is, as we've talked through some of the things that I know I personally have dealt with a shower filter just is not gonna cut it for some of those things. For iron, for calcium and manganese, I find that they don't really do that. In fact, these shower filters pretty much just maybe work on chlorine, and some other basic things.

They don't really seem to do, I think they promise a lot, but I have a hard time seeing how they can deliver a lot based on our conversation. Do you wanna weigh in on that actually, side note. 

[00:50:48] Gerry Bulfin: Yes. We. Stop selling shower filters. Would be nice to have a thing they could screw in the shower and have, 'cause that's a big thing is bathing, it's like maybe they don't care about the laundry, it's like the bathing, so most the shower filters, like we talked about, how activated carbon removes chlorine and chloramines and other chemicals in your water. Most shower filters are made with this material called KDF, which is a 

It looks like ground up brass curtain rods. It's like a brass 

Granular material.

And what it does when the chlorine hits it changed the chlorine in chlorides so that it's a harmless mineral. So you're not, it does take out the chlorine in a way. 'cause you're not smelling the chlorine if you're. Skin is sensitive to chlorine, which a lot of people with eczema and other, it's really bad if they have high chlorine water.

It's really irritating to them. Apparently. But so the shower filter is like a simple thing that'll help, but it's not gonna do the same thing as activated carbon and there's no way you can get enough activated carbon in a little tiny shower filter that would do any good. So that's our take on it.

Yeah. It's better, it's okay to use the shower filter if you just have the chlorine taste and odor, but if you really want to remove chemicals and chlorine you need some kind of bigger carbon thing. 

[00:51:56] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, and I work with a lot of eczema and skin issues, so you know, it is very possible that could be helpful if you're in an apartment.

And you're not gonna be there for very long. And you just need something 

[00:52:05] Gerry Bulfin: Yes. 

[00:52:05] Christa Biegler, RD: But I do find like the costs add up regardless. And so again, if you're in an apartment, you're gonna leave. It's you really want something you can take with you or something that's probably under a few hundred dollars.

Which I think that there are, so what has showed up a lot in our conversation is RO has showed up and generally if there was an easy button, I think people are like RO does the most. And it feels like you have indirectly said that today through our conversation. So RO is the best. What would you say?

So the main objection to RO is that it's re removing ev all these minerals and so people will say, put minerals back. So if you have anything you wanna add to that but how much are RO systems? Typically, 

[00:52:44] Gerry Bulfin: RO systems are an year from about two 50 to 500 for an under the sink. So 

[00:52:50] Christa Biegler, RD: not terrible, 

[00:52:51] Gerry Bulfin: really not terrible.

And then change filters once a year for about. 40, $50 and then the membrane lasts for years, five years or so. So yeah, we offer that too. That's been more popular an alkaline filter after the RO membrane takes everything out. It flows through a final carbon filter for taste, but you can also have it flow through an alkaline filter too, which is usually calcium, again, calcium, magnesium.

And so you're adding a little bit of calcium, magnesium back into the water. Mainly for taste and minerals too, but there's the whole issue about the alkaline water too, which is the big, a lot of that's something different. There's alkaline machines that they sell that are very expensive, that takes water and splits it into, I dunno if you've heard of those.

But anyway, that's a whole other topic. But 

[00:53:37] Christa Biegler, RD: yeah, that is a whole other topic. Okay, so just generally, are there a lot of under counter products that are sold as under crowner filters that are just RO products with a different name? Is that too vague? I feel like there's all 

[00:53:51] Gerry Bulfin: kinds.

I think so. I think there's, people do try to rebrand them with different names, but if you live in an area where the dissolved solids are very low, again, like New York City or San Francisco or Canada, a lot of places that use just pure water from lakes, then you can get away with a good carbon block filter.

So there's ceramic carbon block filters that have carbon and different media there that'll take out fluoride and lead. And so you can get a carbon block filter point of use that'll take out lead fluoride and filtered water without the wastewater involved with ro. So RO membrane. We'll do a really good job 'cause it's filtering down to, submicron level.

So it's very fine getting out all the dissolved solids, metals, that kind of thing. But if you had a water that wasn't 4 95 TDS that would say 80 TDS and actually you like the taste of it, you don't have a problem with the way it tastes, then you could get a carbon block filter and avoid, which is cheaper and there's no wastewater.

[00:54:55] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. Yeah. Lots of great things to consider budget wise. How long is someone gonna be in the home they're in now? Do they even have a problem? In fact is everything you sell mostly whole home and under counter? Do you have anything? I think something, if people

if they don't own their home or they don't plan to be there more than a year, I think people would try to, would wanna gravitate to a very portable system. But do you sell much for a portable 

[00:55:20] Gerry Bulfin: system? We do. We have a swam at carbon block poured through filter that's a stainless steel thing that sits on your counter and you just pour water in and it, water pours out the bottom that's filtered.

It's not ro but it's great for it really makes the water taste good and it's, again, it would be good for areas where you're there like a cabin. Or a community system where you didn't wanna spend a lot of money on it and you just wanted something on your sink. But yeah, you can get those.

And there's many people that make 'em, the ones that we have also has a little UV light so that when the water's flowing out, if there were any bacteria in it would kill the bacteria too.

[00:55:56] Christa Biegler, RD: That's nice. A nice what is the approximate cost on something like that?

[00:56:01] Gerry Bulfin: I think they're around 2 99, if I'm not mistaken. Two. So it's 

[00:56:06] Christa Biegler, RD: an two. So it's an option that 

[00:56:07] Gerry Bulfin: someone can 

[00:56:08] Christa Biegler, RD: take with 

[00:56:08] Gerry Bulfin: them. Yeah. $300. Yeah. 

[00:56:09] Christa Biegler, RD: So about for about two to $300, you can either test your water and find out what kind of problems you have or get something that's portable if you're gonna be in a transient position.

And if you're somewhere longer than, it's probably time to figure out if your water is helping you or not helping you. Which, ultimately we learn these things over time too. There's no substitute sometimes for what time sometimes tells us. If I hadn't had, 

[00:56:30] Gerry Bulfin: yes, that's right. 

[00:56:31] Christa Biegler, RD: The, repair man, tell me, my washer looked like I had concrete inside and I started to think about what that might look like in my body.

That, it just gives me a whole nother. Vision of things. Okay. I'm looking at my notes here. We talked about, where someone can really begin testing ideally or direct to filtration. We talked about all these different types of filters, how people can decode what might be going on with their water, how well water may have a lot more opportunity or op like things going on than really city water.

That arsenic was that more well water or was that city? I can't remember 'cause it was way back at the beginning, but I don't remember what we came up with For arsenic. 

[00:57:08] Gerry Bulfin: Arsenic. You would not find arsenic in city water. But you do find it in well water. Some well 

[00:57:12] Christa Biegler, RD: waters. 

[00:57:13] Gerry Bulfin: Okay. Yeah. Got it. Depends on the area, but yeah.

[00:57:15] Christa Biegler, RD: Did we talk about what filters it? I don't remember that. 

[00:57:17] Gerry Bulfin: There are a couple different ways to filter it. We use most people that have arsenic at a toxic level. They don't want it in their house at all. 'cause you wouldn't want it in your clothes. Understandable. Laundry. So they're filtering it for the whole house.

And it's another type of filter media. That goes in same kind of tank, like a water softener iron filter, and it's a specific filter meeting that takes out the a snake and also takes out uranium and other heavy metal. So it does, I think I originally said that lead filtering from the house, not that common, but if you had lead coming out your you can get a whole house lead filter.

It's just not common for city water. But but yeah, it's a special titanium oxide. It's a special, media that doesn't add anything to the water. It just sucks up like a sponge, all the arsenic, and then every few years you change the media. 

[00:58:05] Christa Biegler, RD: Interesting. Who's at more risk for arsenic in the water?

Is it near mining? I feel like near mining is for sure uranium or radon as well. 

[00:58:14] Gerry Bulfin: Yeah, we see a lot of it. It's all over the place. Interesting. But it's mainly in the southwest is the most of ours thing that we run into, but it's all over the country. It's naturally occurring. 

But it could be contamination too, but generally it's just, naturally occurring in the wild water.

[00:58:31] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Super interesting. Do you do anything internationally? 

[00:58:35] Gerry Bulfin: Yes. We've done a lot of work internationally. As a matter of fact, a lot of us embassies use our system. We did a ultraviolet sterilizer a special one for the US Embassy in Beijing. And we've done other embassies that they don't trust the city water.

They want some kind of biological defense against being contaminated. So we've dealt with them. We've done a lot of work in South America and mostly I would say Mexico, south America, as far as international, but we have systems all over the world, but it's expensive to ship it, so we try to encourage people to get it locally. 'cause sometimes it's not practical to 

[00:59:10] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:59:11] Gerry Bulfin: To ship it, but, 

[00:59:12] Christa Biegler, RD: yeah. That UV sterilization is, how many years have you been doing that? 

[00:59:17] Gerry Bulfin: You uv We've done it all along since like the nineties. It's improved. The quality of the uv sterilized improved, but it's been, yeah, we've done it for a while.

[00:59:28] Christa Biegler, RD: So interesting. 

[00:59:29] Gerry Bulfin: Yeah. 

[00:59:29] Christa Biegler, RD: So if someone calls and they say, I've got this and this and this wrong, rather than it being 10 different things, I feel like your guys your service reps would help them condense it down into a nice little package, right? You can do some things where it's a little bit more streamlined or you figure out how to package it to together a little 

[00:59:45] Gerry Bulfin: bit.

Is that correct? Yeah we don't have any sales people per se, so it's in other words, there's no like commission structure or anything, so really we're the guys that do the quotes or help people figure out what they need. It's just that's what they're doing. They're trying to figure out like, if it were me, what would I do?

We've talked people out of it a lot of times, like some people will say this kind of situation, you might be cheaper to drill a new no, there's some waters. It's not worth spending. It's so terrible. You better off just try to gel deeper or drill another a lot of folks, they've tried doing that, or their local water treatment guy could figure it out or whatever.

That's common. Or they're just an area where they can't get it, then we help 'em through it. But yeah it's a matter of trying to figure out, there's no one exact way to do it, but it's based on their water chemistry and how big their house is. 'cause these things come at all different sizes. Yeah. So it's some people need huge systems, most people don't.

But that's a lot of it's sizing and Yeah. Application specific. 

[01:00:44] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Super interesting. I bet this has evolved a lot in the years and outgrew what you really expected it to be when you first started this company. It's true, and I'm, it's true. I feel like your website search engine optimization is probably really good too because you pop up near the top.

And so I just kept going back to your website. I think the next iteration, I think the new webs, some of the updates are incredible. Other, like I as a user or consumer really feel like I know where to go or to start. And I can see from our conversation, the next iteration for you guys is to have some kind of little with all this AI technology, right?

Some kind of little robot that can help, like what is the cost savings on some of these things, right? Because that's a real, I think you guys are mentally doing that a lot with customers right now already. And so it just helps people figure out, I think that's what we're all coming up with.

What is the best case for me specifically, right? For where I'm, what I'm dealing with for. But I'm sure this has grown, beyond what you thought. And I would love to hear just like a minute of how you feel, how this has changed your life or grown beyond what you thought from this story of getting into this business and then finally what you would want to leave people with today.

[01:01:55] Gerry Bulfin: Oh, thanks for asking. Yeah. The it really has taken a while to put together all the tools that are needed 'cause usually you find, like if you're a water treatment guy working in one area of the country, you usually run into the same problems all the time. So you have certain systems or tools and toolkit to deal with that.

But since we. Went, online in 2000, we just started running into all kinds of crazy stuff all over the world, but mostly in the US and Canada. And so we developed a lot of what we have in stock, all based on what we can do, to solve a particular problem as opposed to, normally what businesses do is figure out like, here's our product line, we're gonna grow this product line, or whatever.

So it's really because of the nature of this business, it's really more of what's needed for our customers to fix what they have to fix. So that's what we hope to lead people. Fortunately we do have people that the systems last a heck of a long time. That's one advantage of being in, being around for so long.

We get people coming back, Hey, I've had your system for 12 years and we're, we're getting ready to, we laugh, but I mean it is interesting that, so mainly we, you have a system that just doesn't cause you a lot of trouble. 'cause it's if you're gonna do it yourself, you don't want a high maintenance thing that you have to mess around with all the time.

Yeah. So that's our goal. 

[01:03:11] Christa Biegler, RD: Cool. I am going to gift people. I don't know if they'll need this or not. I have a little bit of a filtration guide that kind of buckets this as I've thought of it. So I'm gonna put that in the show notes as a gift today. 'cause I feel like all of these resources are great.

I'm gonna put your website in the notes. It looks like your company made us a coupon code that they gave us when they booked this appointment. So it looks like there's a coupon code for anything that someone might [email protected]. It's less stress 15. So we'll have that in the notes. It's great to be able to ask someone who has such a breadth of knowledge about this topic.

I really appreciate you coming on. Oh, thanks Trita. Yeah, this has been fun. And yeah, I really appreciate you sharing with us just this stuff that I feel like is actually quite hard to find but very needed for water filtration. So I appreciate you coming on today. So thank you so much. 

[01:03:59] Gerry Bulfin: Thanks for having me on.