The third-generation owner of Northland Water, Brady Androff, joins the show to talk Minneapolis vs. Saint Paul water and to discuss commonly asked questions about water conditioning.
The show starts off with Brady explaining about his company and its background. He then answers some specific questions:
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Why do we use salt and other things to treat water? What does a water softener do?
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Water softener knocks the minerals present in the water, but why do you want to take those out when our body needs them to function?
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What’s the reason behind why every house built with a water softener has another unsoftened line? When you drink softened water, do you end up with a lot of sodium in-take?
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Why does water feel slimy when it’s really soft?
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What’s better, pellets or crystals?
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Which system is better, the two-tank type or the self-contained unit?
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How much can someone expect to spend on these systems? What about the labor,
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what does that take for labor? Do you need permits to put these systems in?
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Why do you need this electrical wire connecting the copper water lines going into and
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out of a water softener?
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Why is there a funky smell to shallow wells?
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What can you do about stinky water?
TRANSCRIPTION
The following is a transcription from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be slightly incomplete or contain minor inaccuracies due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
Tessa Murry: I know that our bodies, we need minerals to function and magnesium and calcium are good for us, so why would you want to take those things out of your water?
Brady Androff: It’s more for helping the other appliances in the house, so if you can take that out of the water, it makes the other appliances run longer.
[music]
Bill Oelrich: Welcome, everybody. You’re listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name is Bill Oelrich, alongside Tessa Murry and Reuben Saltzman, as always, your three-legged stool. I don’t know why I started saying that, but I started saying that a while back.
Rueben Saltzman: You’ve been saying that every podcast. I’ve noticed that.
TM: I always kinda wonder why that started and when that started. I don’t even know how that happened, Bill.
BO: I don’t know, but it’s stuck now for two or three… We can probably dump it now after this. But you’re listening to an episode of Structure Talk. And on today’s episode, we have Brady Androff with us from Northland Water Conditioning, and we’re gonna dig into water a little bit. Because if you live where we live, there can be some pretty big variabilities in water quality in some of the cities. And up here in the northland, we’ve got Minneapolis and St. Paul that take most of their water… Well, in fact, they take their water right out of the river, and it’s really nice and clean by the time it gets to my house. Or you can live in the suburbs, outside the loop, 494, 694 loop, where your water smells like iron and is awful and it tastes horrible.
RS: You know what? You’re going off the rails, Bill. Tessa, turn his mic off. What is he talking about? Okay? We just started the show.
TM: Bill, when you said that Minneapolis and St. Paul gets its water out of the Mississippi River and it’s really clean by the time it reaches you, are you being sarcastic or is that true?
BO: No, I’m 100% serious about that. And we’ve got great water because you’re not bringing it from 400 feet below the surface of the Earth. It’s runoff that ends up in the river that they just treat and then give back to us, so it’s a very nice cycle.
TM: I’m curious to hear what Brady has to say about that.
BO: I’m sure he’s gonna agree with me.
RS: Yeah, why don’t we hear from the expert.
BO: Before we get too far down this road, Brady, can you go ahead and introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about your background, your company, and tell everybody where they can get ahold of you because I’m sure people will have questions for you afterwards.
BA: Hi, my name is Brady Androff. I’m the owner of Northland Water Conditioning Company. We’re a family-owned and run water softening company in the Twin Cities area. Business was started in 1949 by my grandpa and then I’m a third generation owner and we service, supply, sell water softeners and water filtration systems.
BO: Gotcha, perfect. So you’ve been doing this a long time.
BA: Yes.
BO: How’d your grandfather get into the business?
BA: Yeah, it was kind of a new business at the time. Way back when they used to have manual water softeners where you had to add the salt right into the tank, it didn’t automatically pull the salt in. You would flush it for a while and then time everything and hopefully, you got the timing right, so that you flushed all the salt water out before it was clean. Just a business that he loved to sell so it worked out for him, and then my dad took it over from him and passed it on to me.
BO: He just passed it on? You got it for free or do you have to buy your way into this one?
[chuckle]
BA: A little of both. A little of both.
BO: Okay, alright. That’s a side conversation. I’m sorry, everybody, I didn’t mean to go down that road. But, can you just take me down this road of why we use salt and other things to treat water? What does a water softener actually do?
BA: Good question. So, water softener, the resin inside the tank is actually what softens the water. You can actually soften water without salt. The salt is actually what cleans the resin inside the tank. So the way it works is as you open up a faucet, water runs through the water softener, gets filtered, pulls out those minerals. The main minerals are calcium and magnesium are what’s pulled out, are the hardness, and then you have soft water that goes out to the house. So it’s a little different than say like a hot water tank where whatever is in the tank is what you have for hot water, it just continually filters it throughout the day. Once so many gallons runs through it, it gets saturated and it can’t hold on anymore, when it regenerates, usually that night, that salt water gets pulled in, that knocks the hardness minerals off the resin that goes to the drain and then you have a new filter ready for so many gallons again.
BO: Gotcha, thank you. You simplified it for me. So you said the two most often removed minerals are magnesium and what?
BA: And calcium.
BO: And calcium. So why do I think there’s iron in water?
BA: There can be also. Most city water… That gets treated by the city, so most of the time, iron gets taken out, but you still might have a trace amount that comes through. In most cases, water softeners can pick that up. If you’re on a well, there’s more than likely that you have some iron in the water and that’s where you’ll see it more often is coming from a private well.
TM: So I’ve got a question for you, Brady. I know that, just our bodies, we need minerals to function and magnesium and calcium are good for us, so why would you want to take those things out of your water?
BA: Sure. It’s more for helping the other appliances in the house, ’cause the calcium is usually that white chalkiness you’ll see, like in a dishwasher or on your faucets, and that builds up, also builds up in the pipes and other appliances throughout your house. So if you can take that out of the water, it makes the other appliances run longer, and in most cases, your diet is where you’re gonna get the minerals from. So if you…
TM: Assuming we eat healthy. [chuckle]
BA: Yeah, exactly. In order to get that much calcium, you’d have to drink just gallons and gallons of water to be equivalent to what your diet would provide so the amount that you’re taking out, in most cases, will be made up in your diet.
TM: Okay.
RS: What about your intake of sodium? I’ve heard that when you’re drinking softened water, you end up with a lot more sodium in your diet. Can you comment on that?
BA: That’s a question we get a lot. A water softener does give off a trace amount of sodium, ’cause it’s an ion exchange. So calcium and magnesium attach to the resin, you need that salt water to come in and knock it off, and so it’s an exchange where when it regenerates, the hardness gets flushed off down to the drain and then the resin is coated with sodium. When the hard water comes back through again, the calcium and magnesium knock that calcium… I’m sorry, the sodium off the resin and a little bit goes into the water. One way to look at it is, if you took one quart of softened water, that would be equivalent to a piece of white bread, the sodium content of a white bread. So in most cases, you’re gonna get a lot more sodium out of your diet than you would ever drinking water. So we have had some cases where maybe after a heart attack or your doctor just says, “Absolutely no sodium in your diet.” In that case, you wouldn’t wanna drink soft water. For the majority of people, it’s not an issue. You’re gonna get a lot more sodium out of your diet than you would with water.
RS: Okay, so please explain to me why it is that on every home that’s built with a water softener, they have a bypass where there’s a dedicated cold water line going up to the kitchen faucet, that’s hard water, that’s not softened.
BA: Yep.
RS: The explanation I’ve always received is that you don’t want all that extra sodium in your diet because you’re gonna die a really early death or something like that. [chuckle] Please explain why we go to all this trouble to run an unsoftened line to the kitchen.
BA: Sure. Usually, the main reason they do that is that way, it gives you the option of the cold line being hard for like drinking, if you don’t wanna drink soft water, it gives you that option. Also if, like say watering plants, ideally, you don’t wanna use soft water just ’cause the extra sodium that’s in the water. So that way it gives you one faucet in the house with hard water as an option, whereas the rest of the house would be soft, so that’s the main difference.
RS: Okay. Well, I’m gonna weigh in with my two cents on this one and say this is the worst thing that we’ve ever decided to do to our houses. It’s terrible. I used to live in houses that had this and you get all of these mineral deposits around the kitchen faucet and around the base of the sink, and I would constantly, at least once a year, I’d have to get out some type of implement and I’d have to scrape all these calcium deposits away from my faucet, and eventually, I got this genius idea like, “Hey, what if I just run softened water?” And all of these issues just instantly disappeared. I quit going through a coffee maker every year. It was all these… Seriously.
TM: Prove it, prove it.
RS: I would have to replace my coffee maker annually.
TM: You wouldn’t have that problem if you lived in St. Paul or Minneapolis.
RS: Oh, shut up. I knew you were going there.
[laughter]
BO: Move into the core, man. Move into the core.
[laughter]
BA: One point I was gonna say, Reuben, too is a lot of times, we’ll get calls saying that the water softener doesn’t work, especially if they’re gonna sell their house or planning on selling it, and they’ll say, “Yeah, we tested the water and it was hard.” First question I always ask is, “Where did you test it from?” ‘Cause like you said, the kitchen cold will be hard, so a lot of times they’ll test it there and it’s gonna be hard ’cause it’s not hooked up to the water softener. So I always check to see where they tested the water from. Use a bathroom ’cause more than likely that’s gonna be on the water softener, and then that will give you more of an accurate test of what’s going on.
TM: Brady, I’ve got a question for you, actually. Doing inspections at houses across the metro, there are certain areas where you know tend to have harder water and other areas that have soft water. Well, Minneapolis, if you are to test Minneapolis water with a water hardness test strip, just one that you can buy at a hardware store, it comes back saying that it’s hard. Why is that? Is it hard or is it soft?
BA: Yeah. Minneapolis and St. Paul water is between about five to seven grains of hardness, which is considered soft. Anything over 10 is considered very hard water, which most the suburbs in the Twin Cities area are anywhere from 15 to 40 is kind of the range. So even though five to seven is considered medium, as far as hardness, still gonna… On the test strips, it might still come up as hard. It’s not down to zero. With a water softener, it’ll bring it right down to zero…
TM: Okay.
BA: And so that’s why you’re still getting a little bit of that coming through being between five to seven.
TM: So if you live in Minneapolis and you have someone come in and do the water hardness test strip and they show you that it’s hard from that test strip, and they tell you, “Oh, you need a water softener.” What would you say to that person?
BA: I mean, you can still put a water softener on that type of water and we actually do.
TM: Okay.
BA: Quite a few people, especially if someone’s used to living further out in the suburbs and they move to the city, it’s gonna be a lot softer, but it’s not gonna be down to zero, so some people want that down to zero so they will put a water softener in. But it’ll be a lot more efficient ’cause it won’t regenerate very often, ’cause of the lower hardness. One way you can get around that is the test strips aren’t as accurate as a drip test. So if you get a test, you can do exactly how many… Each drip is how many hardness grains are in the water. That will give you more indicator of exactly how hard it is. Test strips give you a range, so they’re not telling you exactly the hardness. So that’s one way if you are testing it, gives you a little more accurate test.
RS: I gotta ask you for… You talk about getting the hardness down to zero or getting it really low. I’ve been in some homes where I think that’s the case. I had some neighbors growing up where I swear, the water there just felt slimy. What is that? Why does water feel slimy when it’s really soft?
BA: Sure. So if you have hard water in your house and you shower with it, you come out and your skin feels rough. The hardness minerals in the water are… There’s a natural oil on your skin. When you shower with that or wash your hands, it’s rubbing off that natural oil. With soft water, it’s not doing that because the minerals aren’t in the water. That slimy feeling you’re getting… What we always tell people is, with soft water, you can basically cut your soap usage in half. So if you’re using the same amount of soap that you would with hard water, you don’t need that much to clean so that extra soap is harder to wash off. So in most cases, if you just cut your soap usage in half, that’ll get rid of that slimy feeling if you’re not used to that.
RS: Okay, alright. So it’s not the water, it’s your actual skin?
BA: Yeah, exactly.
RS: Okay, got it.
BA: Yep.
BO: Brady, I know there’s a couple different ways to treat water and one of them doesn’t use any… This resin business. Can you explain the difference between those two systems?
BA: Sure. So there’s two different types, there’s the resin type, which uses salt to regenerate or clean itself. There are some other saltless systems out there. Unfortunately, we haven’t found one that works as well as a salt system, so we don’t carry any. Sometimes they’re more marketed as a descaler. So a lot of the different types out there. Some of them change the chemistry of the calcium and magnesium, so it’s less likely to stick to things. And so the only drawback we’ve seen is it’s not actually taking the minerals out of the water, like a water softener does, it’s changing the chemistry, so it’s less likely to stick. But if you leave some water on a counter and let it dry, those minerals are still there and so that’s the difference. Some of those systems also use, it’s more of a conditioner so they’ll use a carbon filter, which is gonna take out chlorine, taste and odor out of the water along with a bunch of other elements. That’s gonna do some of it. Especially if your water isn’t real hard, like Minneapolis-St. Paul would be a good option for that because most of the hardness is already out. The carbon filter will help take out the other trace elements.
BO: Awesome. So we’ve already touched on this a little bit, but grade the worst city in the metro area in terms of hardness and then if you could move from there in. If you’re comfortable giving those grades, Brady, what would you say?
BA: Sure. And some of these have changed over the years. Right now, Brooklyn Park is pretty hard. They’re one of the highest that we test and then Maple Grove, Plymouth area, that northwest suburb area is pretty hard.
RS: I thought we were friends, okay.
[laughter]
BA: I’m gonna get in trouble here. But like I said, most of the suburbs are anywhere from 15 to 40. Brooklyn Park, we’ve been seeing 36, 37, testing up there.
RS: Woah.
BA: And then Maple Grove is a little bit lower. It does vary throughout the year a little bit too, depending on which well they’re pulling from, so that can vary. And even within the city, we’ve seen some differences, so we just like to test each area. And then there are some other ones… Further down south, you get to Apple Valley, Rosemount, that’s closer to 17, 18, in that range. And then you get into the private wells on some of the areas also. That can be house-to-house, just depending on where the well is sitting, that can be different, so…
BO: Are these wells being pulled from the same aquifer basically? Because I am under the understanding that there is a giant aquifer that runs from south of Rochester up to the Twin Cities. Are you familiar with this geological formation and are these municipalities pulling from basically the same aquifer?
BA: Yeah, a lot of them are. I know there’s a large one in Jordan that they pull from and that’s why you’ll see a lot of the cities are real similar that are close, right next to each other, ’cause they’re pulling from the same well. And like I said, that’s seasonal too ’cause they do… In summertime, there’s more water usage, they might pull from a different well than in the wintertime when there’s lower usage. But having said that too, talking about water hardness, there are a couple suburbs that are soft also. So like you said, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Bloomington is also and Eden Prairie, those have soft water and so it just depends on where they’re getting their water from.
RS: Okay. So answer this one, and this is the age old question. What’s better, pellets or crystals?
[laughter]
BA: I can get in trouble with this one.
RS: There’s only one right answer.
BA: We always recommend that you should use whatever is recommended by the manufacturer, [chuckle] but we recommend the crystals on all of our softeners. There’s two different main types of water softeners. There’s ones that you buy that are all together, so the water softener is together with the salt tank, all-in-one, those generally recommend pellet. And then if you have a separate salt tank, all the systems that we sell are the separate salt tank, those we do recommend crystals.
RS: Okay, alright.
BA: One of the reasons for that is… One of the problems you can run into is a salt bridge inside the salt tank, and that’s where you get a hard layer of salt and so the salt isn’t dropping down into the water at the bottom of the tank and being dissolved to use when it regenerates. A lot of times, the ones that are all-in-one, because the water softener sits inside there, especially in the spring and the summer, it’ll sweat a little bit and have condensation. That condensation runs down the tank and gets the salt wet. Once that dries then you get that hard layer, almost like a bridge in there. And so, a little less likely to get salt bridging when you have those pellets. It’s just a bigger chunk, more weight, to drop down. That’s the reason they recommend those. Having a separate salt tank, you’re less likely to get as much humidity. You can, depending on your basement or wherever your softener is, you’re a little less likely to get that, so the crystals is what we recommend for that.
1RS: Okay, alright. So which is better, the two-tank type or the two-unit type or the self-contained unit… Just the one unit?
BA: We only sell the two-tank system.
[chuckle]
BA: The reason for that is, the all-in-one are nice because they’re nice and compact, so if you have a really tight space, sometimes that’s the only thing that’ll fit in there. The only downside is because it’s a smaller tank and resin tank, they have to pack more resin in that tank in order to get the capacity up. When it regenerates, it flushes itself and stirs that resin around and if you don’t have a lot of open space in there, it can’t do that and so it gets really compacted and that can decrease the lifespan of the resin. And so that’s just one of the reasons we use a separate tank, ’cause we can use a larger tank, a little taller one that has a little more room for that resin to move around, it just cleans it a little better. But it depends on your application, if you’re really tight spot and that’s the only thing that’ll work, those work great.
BA: The other major difference between the two is the type of resin that’s used, and that’s where the lifespan of the softener will come in. Generally, the all-in-one systems, what we see, there’s always outliers on this too, but generally is about five to eight years is the lifespan of those, depending on the hardness of the water coming in the house. The resin that we use is more of a high capacity, so ours are gonna last closer to 15 to 20 years, depending on the hardness of the water coming in the house.
RS: Wow. That is a huge difference.
BA: Yeah. That’s the main difference, because even if mechanically everything’s working correctly, if your resin is shot and it just can’t pull out the minerals anymore, you’re still gonna get hard water in the house. So even though it’s using salt, mechanically everything’s right, unfortunately, you’ll still get hardness coming to the house.
BO: So I did a little research quickly and I found the name of this aquifer that I was referencing before. It’s something called the Mt Simon aquifer. Have any of you ever heard of this?
RS: I’m gonna do my best to forget.
BO: Okay. Well, this is actually kind of interesting. It lies anywhere from 600 to 1,000 feet below, and it’s in south central Minnesota, it extends down. And some of the water in this aquifer is up to 30,000 years old.
TM: Woah.
RS: Wow.
BO: Pretty interesting stuff. It’s saturated sandstone. And MPR, Minnesota Public Radio, had a interesting story on this way back in 2008, and we’ll reference the link to this story, but it’s talking here that there’s somewhere… This town of Mankato, which is a little bit south of the Twin Cities, they pump out 3.2 billion gallons of water per year, just out of that Mankato vicinity. So don’t quote anything I just said there, read the article. But the number 3.2 billion gallons of water per year is being pumped out of this aquifer in the Mankato vicinity. Pretty interesting stuff. That’s a lot of water. Holy cow. Wow. Okay. Back to water systems. What else do you guys have?
[laughter]
TM: You know what? I had a question for Brady. How much would someone expect to spend on installing one of these systems, I guess both types of systems? Are they similar in price?
BA: Yeah. The all-in-one systems that you’ll find at most of the big box stores, they’re different sizes, anywhere from $300 to $600, $700 for those systems. Most of the two-tank systems usually start out at around say about $1,000 and then go up from there, depending on what kind of bells and whistles you want on the system. And then there are some twin-tank systems too, which have two water softeners that are connected, and the price goes up on those just because you have two tanks and a little bit more hardware. It’s just a ballpark. But it’s like anything you can get… You can spend a lot more than that, depending on if you have sometimes really, really hard well water, you need a specialized unit or maybe a couple units together to really get your water where you need it, so it just depends on the water quality.
RS: You quoted some prices for the units themselves. What about labor? What does that take for labor? How much time is involved? Is it gonna be another $1,000 in labor or what?
BA: No, generally it’s… Depending on what needs to be done, you’re looking at maybe $100, $200 for the installation. The installation generally takes anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours, depending on if you’re taking another softener out and putting one in or if there’s a little extra plumbing that’s needed. Usually, a half day event will take care of it.
RS: Okay.
BA: Yeah. It depends on the application, on how much plumbing. If it’s a new plumbing, in other words there hasn’t been a water softener in the house before, that might involve a little bit more, depending on the age of the house. Most new construction is constructed with a water softener in mind, so they set up the plumbing for that, so in most cases, that wouldn’t take a lot. But if you have an older house, probably 20 years or older that’s never had a water softener, now you might have to run some extra lines. ‘Cause ideally, what you want is you want the outside lines to be on hard water and then, like you were talking about, Reuben, with the kitchen cold, depending on how you wanna do that…
RS: Don’t do it. That’s my advice to everybody listening. Don’t do it.
BO: I’m gonna take exception to the worst thing we do in houses is not running hard water to your kitchen sink. I think Tessa’s got 14 building science things that she could recite right now that would…
[chuckle]
TM: Probably.
RS: Okay, okay. I’m challenging you. Name one thing that we go way out of our way to do under the guise of doing something good and it’s just worthless. Name one. Crickets.
TM: I gotta think about this. Let me think about this, Reuben.
[chuckle]
RS: Alright. I’ll let you come back before this is over. But this is the worst, I’m standing by that.
[chuckle]
RS: Where were we? So we were talking about the installation of water softeners and what it takes. Brady, I got a quick question for you, ’cause… And I’ll throw this out to you, guys. I’ve known Brady for a long time now. He’s been out to my last house, he’s been out to the house that I’m in now. He fixed my last water softener. He installed a new one at the house that I’m in now and I see hundreds, thousands of water softener installations and Brady’s is the cleanest one I’ve ever seen, hands down. He does a perfect job. He’s even got the bonding jumper at the water pipes coming in and out. He’s got a big, thick wire going across, it’s like… You can tell. It’s just… This is what he does, this is his jam. But what is that bonding jumper all about, Brady? I know what I think it’s for, but I wanna hear you explain why you need this electrical wire connecting the copper water lines going into and out of the water softener.
BA: Sure. An electrician could probably describe this a lot better than I could, but my understanding is most water softeners now are made out of plastic and so if you have copper plumbing in your house, you’re breaking the continuation of copper ’cause it’s going into the water softener and coming back out. So that copper grounding wire discontinues that line going through there, that way… ‘Cause a lot of times, the copper line is a ground for the house, that braided line coming up to ground the house. If there’s a break in that… The way it’s been described to me is, if your house is ever hit by lightning, that ground would have somewhere for that surge to go into the ground. If you break that, now that’s going into other appliances in your house. So just real important to keep that electricity running through that copper pipe, not being interrupted with that going through the water softener.
RS: That’s perfect. Thank you.
BO: Brady, do you need to pull permits to put these systems in?
BA: Yes, you do. Every city’s a little bit different on what they charge, so it just depends on the city and then, yeah, whether it’s a replacement or a new appliance.
BO: So I have a question. I grew up in the country and a lot of the well water we drank… I say this and please don’t think I’m crazy, but I always felt the water tasted like cow manure smells and it’s… You know what I’m saying? No. I grew up around a lot of dairy farms in…
TM: Are you talking about sulfur, Bill?
BO: Well, no. I don’t know what it is, but there’s this connection to smell and taste. Why is there always that funky smell to shallow wells or these wells that maybe don’t go super deep into the ground?
BA: Sure. One common thing you will smell is, it’s hydrogen sulfide and that’s the rotten egg smell that some people get. It’s usually… It can be from dead vegetation. So like you said, if it’s a real shallow well coming off of swamps and lakes like that, you can get that. It’s a tough one because it’s a gas and so when it comes through the lines, you get that smell, and a lot of times they’re associated with iron, too. So if you have iron in the water, that can give off that smell. So, ideally, if you can get the iron taken out of the water, either with an iron filter or sometimes the water softener will do it. And then the other option is, like we were talking about earlier, with a carbon filter, which is great for taking the taste and the odor out of the water. So those are some of the options for taking care of that. But sometimes, that smell can be really, really strong, sulfur smell, and that can vary season to season also, just depending on where the water is in the well, too. But yeah, it can be a big problem.
BO: That explains why some of these wells and some of the water I’ve tasted around Northern Minnesota might be that way, ’cause there’s a lot of wetlands, there’s a lot of… I guess this water could originate in those areas and just take some of the smell with it.
BA: Exactly. Yeah, yep.
TM: Well, and if you’re talking about up north, Bill, maybe the iron range has something to do with it.
BO: That stuff’s way down in there, maybe. [chuckle] Side note here and at my cabin, the water we use is straight out of the lake and it just runs over two filters and then heads into… [chuckle]
TM: Gross, gross.
BO: We obviously don’t drink it, but it goes into the water heater, it goes directly to the cold, so…
RS: Tell him how wrong he is.
[chuckle]
BA: In most cases, it should be fine, like I said, if you’re not drinking it, then you’d wanna put some other type of system maybe a reverse osmosis or some kind of carbon filter to take some of that out. Usually in most cases, if you’re just using it to shower and everything else, it’s not a problem.
BO: Listen, the wells up in this area are 400 plus feet deep and you’re not even getting into an aquifer or a vein of water. You’re drilling into some crack in a bunch of bedrock that occasionally fills with water and a lot of the wells in this area are getting one to two gallons of water per minute. It’s just not worth it to spend…
RS: You gotta be kidding me.
BO: Yeah, no. It’s just the way it is.
RS: Yikes.
BO: I’ll take it from the lake.
RS: I don’t blame you.
BO: Well, this is good stuff. You can always talk about the science of these sorts of things all day long and I’m sure there’s water softening conferences and you guys, you just geek out on all of this stuff, but we only have a limited amount of time. So, Brady, thank you very much for spending some time with us today. Can you just, again, shoot out your contact information, where people can find you if they wanna consult with your company?
BA: So I’m Brady Androff, Northland Water Conditioning. Our website is northlandwater.com. And if… Yeah, if anyone has questions, the best place is info@northlandwater.com. Send those and I’d be happy to answer any questions people have.
RS: Cool. I’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes.
BO: So the cleanest water softener, water conditioning system installation you’re ever going to see, according to Reuben Saltzman, is…
RS: That’s right.
BO: Northland Water Conditioning. And thank you, Brady, for spending some time with us today. You have been listening to Structure Talk, a Structure Tech presentation. My name’s Bill Oelrich, alongside Tessa Murry and Reuben Saltzman as always. We will catch you next time. Thanks for listening.