[00:00:40] Bill Morris: Welcome to Problem Solved, Habitat Magazine's ongoing series about challenges facing New York City co-op and condo boards, and how their professionals help them overcome those challenges. I'm Bill Morris. With me today is Spencer Kraus, vice president of Fred Smith Plumbing and Heating. Thank you for joining us, Spencer.
[00:00:57] Spencer Kraus: Thank you, Bill. Good to see you again.
[00:01:00] Bill Morris: Now this is sort of an unsightly problem, but a lot of people in New York City turn on their tap water and brown water comes out. Is that a common problem that you see in your practice?
[00:01:10] Spencer Kraus: It is a common problem. A lot of co-ops and condominiums call us with brown water issues, especially right after a shutdown. It's not sewage. There are reservoirs that provide water to all the buildings. The reservoirs are located very far away and they have to use old plumbing pipes to get water to your building. So as the water flows from the reservoirs, it picks up small particles and sediment and iron on the way.
When it gets to the building, those small particles are suspended in the water and then go into the building system. They're found in the cold water mains. Then, when they go to the heating systems and the hot water systems, they expand and they rust and show up as brown water in the hot water system.
[00:02:09] Bill Morris: What's the first step that you take as a plumber when you get a call like this?
[00:02:14] Spencer Kraus: Typically the first thing we do is we send a supervisor out there to take a look at the brown water. We'll sometimes put a small cartridge filter on the main water line in the basement. You take a water sample. You screw on a filter and you let the water run for maybe an hour. And by the end of that hour, the filter has turned brown.
The solution is a large depth filtration device at the building water main in the basement. We've installed these depth filters in about 200 buildings. If they are properly maintained, we've had almost a hundred percent success rate when it comes to clearing the brown water issues.
[00:02:55] Bill Morris: Tell me about the cost of these depth filters, Spencer. Surely it depends on the size of the building, but what's the range?
[00:03:01] Spencer Kraus: We size these depth filtration devices on system demand. A smaller co-op doesn't use that many gallons per minute; it might have one large tank. A very large building with 400 units, you might have three, four, maybe even five of these depth filtration devices, so the cost range could be from $8,000 up to $40,000, depending on your system's demand.
[00:03:28] Bill Morris: Once the filters are in place, do they have a continuing healthy effect on the water circulating throughout the building?
[00:03:35] Spencer Kraus: Yes. It's not like the water that is coming into the building is bad to drink, it's just full of these iron particles that can negatively affect the building systems. Here's what happens. Your water comes in the main. It goes to your boilers, it goes to your hot water heating, it goes to your HVAC systems, your pumps, all the way up to your roof tank, most likely to your fire suppression system and all the system components there. All those particles, all the sediment, all the iron, whether it's the hot water or the cold water, will wear on the system. That's very important to know. The water comes in, goes through our depth filtration devices, and it filters out 99.9% of all of the iron and sediment in the water.
[00:04:27] Bill Morris: So the upfront investment that a co-op or condo board is going to make, up to $40,000 or so, will in a sense pay for itself over time in terms of reduced maintenance and breakdowns of the whole building's system.
[00:04:38] Spencer Kraus: And it's not just mechanical parts in the basement, after you install a depth filter. The roof tank sludge up there that you find when you drain the roof tank is not going to be as bad. When you do a shutdown, a lot of the times co-op and condominiums have problems with their flushometers or their shower bodies in the individual apartments. But if you have a depth filter on the main, the chances of you having a particle that's keeping the flushometer open or particles jamming up your shower body and making it so your cartridge needs to be cleaned out and repaired is lower.
You actually have cost savings much later on that can eventually pay and make up for that initial investment in the depth filtration system.
[00:05:20] Bill Morris: So the holistic solution is the right solution.
[00:05:23] Spencer Kraus: I would say. One of the solutions if you don't have a depth filtration system is to just run the water and flush the lines. And the problem with that is that you're opening up the hot water system in the basement. You're dumping the brown water and flushing it until the water clears up, but then you're wasting energy. That water has been heated already, so you're dumping hot water down the drain. It's a waste of water. It's a waste of energy. That's kind of closing the barn doors after the animals have already run out. You want to put a depth filtration system right on the water main as it enters the building.
[00:05:57] Bill Morris: All right. Well, thank you, Spencer. That's very informative. I'm glad I don't have any brown water.