Our new water system is working. The crews have left, no doubt to sign up their kids for colleges that they can now afford.

The system goes to a LOT of trouble to produce the clear, soft water we now have. There are five treatment filters or stages for our drinking water, and four stages purify all the other water used in the home – showers, washing machine, etc. Three stages treat the water used for irrigation. Even that water is miles better than the water we were using a couple of months ago.

Our biggest water problem was that a very common iron-concentrating bacteria is present in the water, and once the water is exposed to air after traveling up the well, those bacteria begin to concentrate the iron in the water and grow, producing red particles. Those particles, left untreated, will build up into a red/orange sludge that discolors everything and makes the water unpalatable.

We’ve lived with it so long, and had tried unsuccessfully to get rid of it through other filters, that we had just accepted that the well water quality was never going to be great. It wasn’t unhealthy to drink with the filtering we were able to do (we think), but the irrigation water looked like hell.

Now all that is history, and the biggest factor is a new filter stage called a vortex. It’s a patented stage that pushes the well water into a sand filter filled with sand (doh) and at least one proprietary mineral, then pushes it hard back into the holding tank, creating a vortex. The vortex action plus the sand filter removes the iron-concentrating bacteria. Our water has never looked so clear.

Another feature of the new system is that the water it produces will no longer harm our trees and plants. The iron and salt concentrated in our previous irrigation feed was toxic to a LOT of the flora on our property. We’ve lost a lot of old plants over the years, like some big figs, nut trees, citrus, etc. Part of that loss is drought-related, but a lot was due to hard, hard water. I’m looking forward to replacing some of those plants now that we’re sure we can keep them alive.

Soooooo….we think we’ve solved our drought and water problems here at our Socal home. That leaves 40 million other people to figure it out. Good luck.