Mountain View Pure Water Podcast

The UV Revolution: How UV Filtration Transforms Your Water Quality

• Dan Toth • Episode 6

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How Does UV Filtration Help Improve Water Quality?

Pure water shouldn't come with chemical baggage. That's the powerful message behind this eye-opening exploration of UV water filtration technology with Dan Toth, owner of Mountain View Pure Water.

Ever wonder what's really lurking in your tap water? Dan breaks down the fundamental differences between traditional chlorination methods and UV purification, revealing how ultraviolet light disrupts the DNA of harmful microorganisms without adding chemicals to your drinking water. While municipal water treatment relies on chlorine and bromine that leave potentially harmful byproducts behind, UV filtration achieves an impressive 99.99% elimination rate of bacteria, viruses, and even resilient organisms like cryptosporidium and giardia.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Dan explains the science behind UV sterilization and its practical applications for both city water and well water systems. You'll learn critical maintenance tips, including why that UV bulb needs yearly replacement even when it still appears to be working, and how proper pre-filtration prevents bacteria from "hiding" behind particles. Particularly alarming is the revelation that most home buyers never test well water for bacterial contamination unless required by specific loans—a dangerous oversight that could put families at risk. Whether you're concerned about chemical residues in your municipal water or ensuring your private well delivers truly safe water, this episode provides essential knowledge to make informed decisions about your home's water quality.

Ready to take control of your water quality? Call or text 423-218-9361 for a free in-home consultation or visit online to learn more about how UV technology can transform your home's water without the chemical compromise.

To learn more about Mountain View Pure Water & Air visit:
https://www.MVPWater.net
Mountain View Pure Water & Air
2926 Boones Creek Rd Suite #1
Johnson City, TN 37615
423-218-9361

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Mountain View Pure Podcast, where your journey to exceptional water quality begins. Here's your host, dan Toth, owner of Mountain View Pure Water. They proudly serve homeowners in the Tri-Cities and beyond, offering advanced water and air purification solutions that support a healthier lifestyle. The mission is clear helping you get great water.

Speaker 2:

When it comes to water purification, uv filtration is a game changer, eliminating harmful microorganisms without the need for chemicals. Welcome back everyone. Skip Monty, co-host slash producer, back in the studio with Dan Toth, owner of Mountain View Pure Water. Dan, how's it going? Doing excellent, skip. How are you today? I'm doing excellent as well. It's a beautiful day outside and no rain.

Speaker 2:

I'm good, I'm good. So, dan, I'm pretty excited to get into the conversation today. Water quality is something that most of us take for granted, but UV filtration is a fascinating technology that makes a real difference, so let's just dive in. How does UV filtration help improve water quality?

Speaker 3:

I think maybe the first thing to talk about is what are we talking about when we talk about a filter? Ultraviolet is a sterilization technique that we're going to use two words interchangeably sterilization and disinfection. Okay, so maybe there's something living in the water that could be harmful to a human. What we want to do is we want to remove that. We want to disinfect the water. If the water is currently infected with something that can be harmful, we want to disinfect it. The other concept is sterilizing. Well, what is sterilization? It is the removal of the ability to reproduce. Okay, to sterilize it.

Speaker 3:

What ultraviolet sterilization does or ultraviolet disinfection, same term is it passes water by a light. So imagine this is a light bulb inside of a container and the water passes by that light bulb and it's a correct frequency to disrupt the DNA of the living organisms that could be in there, infecting the water. So as the water passes through, there's enough energy in that light, the right frequency and enough time as water passes by, for anything that's living in that water to have their DNA disrupted. Even if they're not living things like viruses, it disrupts the DNA so they're no longer able to do what they do, making people sick. This works for bacteria, virus and even things like cysts, cryptosporidium and giardia and anything that could be present in water waterborne illness. Ultraviolet sterilization can deactivate or eliminate that risk. So that's the first concept.

Speaker 3:

When we talk about filtering, we're usually thinking about filtering something out. But ultraviolet sterilization doesn't really filter anything out. It changes the ability of something to be living and active and a contaminant that would harm us to being inactivated or eliminated from the ability to harm us. So filtering is not really what it's doing. The water is passing through it, but it's actually causing a change in the water, not the chemistry of the water. It still remains water. It doesn't remove or add any sort of chemical to the water, unlike chlorination. If you chlorinate the water, it can also disinfect or sterilize the water, but it can't do that without affecting the water chemistry itself. So you'll have byproducts of chlorination, you'll have chemicals and leftover leftovers of the the chlorination process. So we see this when we look in at the city water.

Speaker 3:

I love to tell people about the EWG, which is the environmental working group. I always tell everyone I talk to tell people about the EWG, which is the Environmental Working Group. I always tell everyone I talk to about the Environmental Working Group. You can go on their website, just type in into a new browser, ewg, and you'll have options come up. And we want to look at the tap water database.

Speaker 3:

The tap water database will allow you to see what particularly is in the water of the municipal water supply that you get your water from. In fact, what they've done at the Environmental Working Group is they've collected annual water quality reports from virtually every water treatment utility in the country and they have posted those on their website. So you can just look it up by your zip code and then choose the utility that you get water provided to you from, and then you can see what the current health guidelines are assessing your water quality report from your municipal water supply. So it's a really neat, a really neat thing. So most of the city water in the country is sanitized by either chlorine, chloramines, bromide. A few places use ozone, a few places use ultraviolet, but the majority are the chlorine bromine and that leaves a chemical we'll say waste product, a leftover in the water. Waste product, the leftover in the water, and so ultraviolet can do something similar to make the water safe without any leftover.

Speaker 2:

Disinfectant byproducts Wow, well, with chlorine, and I was going to ask that how does it compare to chlorine? Is water that's been chlorinated dangerous, or just talk about that?

Speaker 3:

So according to the US government, it's not dangerous, but of course we don't have the best track record for keeping people safe. So the EPA hasn't raised, hasn't changed, upgraded, improved drinking water standards in almost 20 years. And that's kind of a scary thought, because we now know a whole lot more about what can be and is wrong with our drinking water, what they call potable water. This is water that they say you can drink. This is safe water, and the reality is it is safe, for today in most situations. That brings us back to exactly what an ultraviolet system does. We don't want anything in our water that can harm us, that can be a threat to us biologically, that can cause us discomfort, upset, stomach, irritable, you know, bowel issues. Maybe we think of malaria, dysentery, different things in the past that people basically had diarrhea until they died. We don't want something like that coming into our cup of water that we're drinking, and so that's why all the water is sanitized in some way.

Speaker 3:

In this country, all the public water supply is sanitized, and that's what they use Chlorine. Now the majority are using bromine to do that, and so there are leftover byproducts, and I think of it kind of this way, if you were to mop your floor. Let's imagine you like pine salt and you mop your floor with pine salt and when you got done you took that mop water, poured it through a coffee filter and then set it on the table to drink it. Nobody would do that. But at the same time they're not necessarily removing those sanitization byproducts from the water before they send it to us. It looks nice and clean, it smells like a pool, but it has a lot of stuff in it that you may not want to be drinking.

Speaker 2:

Wow, forever diarrhea.

Speaker 3:

Only until you die.

Speaker 2:

Only until you die. That's right. Wow, yet a great reason to get a filtration system with UV. You mentioned that the water's passing by this bulb. How often does that bulb have to be replaced to maintain its effectiveness?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, in water treatment bulbs usually have a 9,000 hour life. Some of them are up to 11. What that means is the bulb will stay lit. If you don't understand what the lifespan is, the bulb will stay lit. You could have a bulb that's five years old and it still looks like it's working. But the lifespan on it has to do with the frequency it's producing as it burns.

Speaker 3:

And so after about 9,000 hours of continuous prevention, sanitization because the light doesn't ever shut off that light will degrade to the point where the frequency isn't the right frequency to kill anymore. It's not the right frequency to sterilize, and at that point you're getting a much, much reduced sterilization rate and eventually it won't work anymore. It won't be providing you any sterilization. So one of the one of the things that people do misunderstand is that just because they have a light that seems to be working you know we are used to walking into a room if the lights turn on when we flip that switch that's the expected and desired outcome. That's not the same thing with ultraviolet sterilization the light may be lit but you're not getting the desired outcome, which is a sterilization. So it's important that those lights get changed every 11 or 12 months.

Speaker 2:

Is there like a tracking system or something that, or you just where you know, at a certain point kind of like a refrigerator, water filter or light comes on and says it's time to change? Does that happen with the UV system?

Speaker 3:

Well, that's a funny, funny thing that you just brought up, because there are many refrigerator products out there, different companies and manufacturers that actually have the switch to turn on that light, to change your filter, not have anything to do with the water usage. It might be linked to how many times you open the door, and so if you have kids, like I do, that could be happening pretty often. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, wow, wow, did not know that yeah.

Speaker 3:

So it's really not arbitrary. You need to change out that light once a year, whether you, whether you think it's still working or not, because the frequency changes as the light burns.

Speaker 2:

So at least once a year.

Speaker 3:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

At least Wow. Well, can can purification be used along with other filtration methods to make it even more effective?

Speaker 3:

Yes, actually we run into this a lot. On well water, often someone will call for a well water test on a new house that they're buying or maybe there is a USDA or a VA loan. If they have well water, it has to be tested to be safe from bacteria before that loan can go through. In fact, I would say one of the biggest problems that I see when I look at how real estate is conducted is, unless it's a USDA or VA loan, they largely the realtors, the mortgage lenders, the home purchasers largely neglect to test the well to see if it's safe because it's not mandated for the loan, and so that's something that I would encourage anyone who's listening to this. If you're buying a home that has well water, you need to have that tested or you could be subjecting yourself to something that can harm you or your family.

Speaker 2:

Does UV filtration work better in well water or municipal water supplies, or does it matter?

Speaker 3:

So it works well, with two caveats. Okay, so it's a 99 point. What's the numbers here? It's incredibly effective, 99.99%. Incredibly effective, 99.99% elimination of bacteriological contaminants. Chlorine doesn't have that. You can have things like cysts, like Cryptosporidium and Giardia grow in chlorinated water lines and still kind of come in and invade your home and maybe you can drink that and have some intestinal issues or stomach issues from that. That's on city chlorinated or brominated water. That sort of thing can still happen With well water.

Speaker 3:

Typically our biggest issues are is there sediment in the water? Because the UV light is only effective if it's actually in direct contact with the, if it can directly shine on the bacteria or virus or whatever's in the water. And so if you have a particle larger than five microns, the bacteria can actually hide behind that particle from the UV light and can enter in undestroyed, so in full working order. And so we always put a filter in front of the ultraviolet system. That's a five micron filter, to make sure that nothing can hide behind particulate to escape the uv sterilization. So that's one thing. The second issue is if the water is very hard seven grains of hardness or more the the water needs to be softened because otherwise you'd have a tremendous buildup.

Speaker 3:

You know, if you have hard water at home, you have a white crusty buildup in different places. If you have iron, you can have a staining or an iron orangish, reddish buildup different places. Manganese can be a black buildup and accumulation, and so those sorts of things need to be removed or they will coat the quartz sleeve that the bulb fits down in between. It separates the bulb from the water and it's called a quartz sleeve and it's clear. It can coat that quartz sleeve and make the bulb useless. It can't shine on the water anymore. So you have to remove any minerals or contaminants that could cover up that quartz sleeve, rendering the ultraviolet system useless. So softening water that is seven grains or harder is a necessity. Removing iron is a necessity. So those are the sorts of things that we have to use filtration equipment before the ultraviolet system in well water.

Speaker 2:

Wow, this has been a very eye-opening discussion. I still can't get over the diarrhea until you die.

Speaker 3:

That's not necessarily nowadays, but I mean, you take a look back in history and it doesn't matter what age you find diseases. Diarrhea is often the way people died because we didn't have a way to fix that.

Speaker 2:

Right. Well, hopefully we can avoid it with a UV filtration system now A powerful tool for cleaning and safe water, and I know I appreciate, and I'm sure your listeners appreciate, these insights as well. Dan, thanks so much and we'll catch you in the next episode. Sounds good, thanks, skip. All right, thanks, man.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining us on the Mountain View Pure podcast. When you're ready to transform your home's water and air quality, call or text 423-218-9361 for a free in-home consultation. For more information visit mvpwaternet. Remember, great water is the foundation of a great life.