266: The Hidden Dangers of Tap Water
with Ryan Kuypers
Today we’ll be discussing the importance of the quality of water you use in your home, and what kind of water treatment system I personally recommend.
Our guest today is Ryan Kuypers, and he’s an engineer at Dime Water, which is his family business specializing in water treatments. He’ll discuss the current state of our water quality and explain why it’s critical to treat the water in your life. And we have a bonus guest today too! Warren Phillips is back to join in on the conversation, which we are really excited about.
Warren, Ryan, and I will all discuss the treatment options available to you, and please be sure to check out our show notes for links to find out more about Dime Water.
Additional Information:
Call Dime Water at 760-734-5787 and use promo code CELLTV to save 10%
Dime Water Travel Reverse Osmosis System
Dime Water Aquafer Whole House Filtration System
Dime Water Nature's Balanced Water Saver – Reverse Osmosis
Dime Water – DRO-100-NV 4 stage RO Water Saver
Dime Water – DRO-1-NV 4 RO Water Saver
Dime Water – Aquafer Plus- Whole House Filtration (Home size 5000)
Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
One of the main questions I get is, “What about my water? Dr. Pompa, what water filtration unit that you get” —you get that question answered in this episode and more. We talk about whole-house filtration, why that may be the key for your health, and also point of service units. What do you have in your kitchen, what you’re drinking every day? I talk about why your water is different than my water and what you can do about that in this episode. This is the water episode. This is what you asked for, so stay tuned to this episode.
Ashley:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith. Today we’ll be talking all about water quality and what kind of water treatment system Dr. Pompa personally recommends. We have an extra-special guest today, too. Warren Phillips is back to join in on the conversation, which we are really excited about. Our guest today is Ryan Kuypers. He’s an engineer at Dime Water, which is his family business, specializing in water treatment. He’ll discuss the current state of our water quality and explain why it’s critical to treat the water in your life.
Dr. Pompa, Warren, and Ryan will all discuss the treatment options available to you. Please be sure to check out our show notes for links to find out more or to purchase. Okay, so let’s get started and welcome Dr. Pompa, Warren Phillips, and Ryan Kuypers to the show. This is Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Pompa:
Ryan from Dime Water, it’s about time you made this show. Welcome to Cell TV.
Ryan:
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Dr. Pompa:
We even have Warren here as a special guest, and you’ll find out why, folks. Warren, welcome.
Warren:
Yeah, it’s good to be here. I just want to bring some entertainment and some science on one of my favorite topics.
Dr. Pompa:
You know what, Warren? Actually, one of your number one YouTube videos was the water video. Ryan, he was showing the water units that we have in our homes. By the way, this show is long overdue because how many people ask me, “Show me your whole-house water system and your water systems.” Here we go. This is the show today, so stay tuned. This is the show you guys all asked for. This is going to be a lot of fun.
Let’s bring the problem right at it here, Ryan. It just amazes me that people don’t have water systems in their home. I take it from point of service, and I have a whole-house. I’d go out to dinner with some really prestigious doctors, and I watch them drink tap water.
Warren:
I can’t stand it.
Dr. Pompa:
Warren, you’re there, right?
Ryan:
It drives me batty.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:02:41] won’t do it. I think that if they just really knew what was in the water, I don’t know that they would do that. Ryan, let’s talk about it. What is in water? I know there’s a difference of city water [00:02:54], but let’s start there with the problem.
Ryan:
Okay, for the most part, if we look at what is flowing in our water supply, cities—first of all, we live in America. For the people that are listening from America, our [00:03:07] is tremendous. Our government requires that municipalities bring it up to a certain level, so we’re incredibly lucky, at least, to have potable water coming out of our sinks.
Dr. Pompa:
True.
Ryan:
They do a great job to ensure biological growth isn’t there, but there are some things that they just don’t have the time, money, or energy to take care of. One is pharmaceuticals that pass through people’s systems. Obviously, over the decades, we, as Americans, have used so many more drugs. We’re prescribed to a greater extent, and our bodies—there’s not the magical drug that gets dialed in to your specific weight. That passes through your system not completely utilized, and then it moves into the water supply.
Look at the back of your toothpaste. Look at your deodorant. All these components and chemical compositions that we use in our day-to-day life end up in some way, shape, or form getting passed back through. As I said, a lot are dealt with, but a lot just linger in there. If we don’t see situations where people are becoming ill from them, it’s generally ignored. Occasionally, you have these flare-ups. Everyone knows about Flint, Michigan. That’s a whole different situation because that was just a lack of foresight in terms of a water supply affecting old plumbing.
Once again, aging infrastructure, intensive use of chemicals to a greater extent year after year after year, limited treatment of that, and the result is greater problems. It’s impossible to consider the fact that a university out there will do a 40-year study to determine how much drinking X, Y, Z over the years will affect you, but there are reasons, obviously, that Alzheimer’s is on the rise. Allergies are on the rise. Things are occurring because of our environment and the fact we’ve been an industrialized nation for well over 100 years now. I mean, aggressively industrialized.
Part of that challenge is then you trust the city up to a certain point, and you have to take the ball the last five yards, if you will, and get it into the end zone from the perspective of a safe, drinkable water that you can control. That is one thing you know you can control. You can have a system under your sink that you maintain that guarantees you quality water. You can’t control the air you breathe, and food is questionable, whether or not organic, by no means, creates a situation where you’re protecting yourself from whatever may be in your food supply.
Dr. Pompa:
You actually mentioned drugs. I don’t know if you all saw this. It was just in the paper up near Seattle. They’re finding drugs, Prozac, caffeine, cholesterol meds, ibuprofen, bug spray. This was all found in the fish up in that area. They’re testing the fish and realizing that all these things are in high concentrations. I don’t know if people realize that. When you’re ingesting your water—you had said that they don’t have filtration sophisticated enough to remove these drugs. We’re all being exposed to these things unknowingly.
Warren:
Let me add to that. That brings up a point. I remember a study back when I just got out of graduate school. I studied toxicology and low-temperatured aqueous geochemistry. That’s why I love water filtration. We found Kyle Kuypers, Ryan’s brother, the other scientist here and his dad, who’s a chemical engineer, correct?
Ryan:
Mechanical.
Warren:
Mechanical engineer who founded the company that they have, Dime Water. Anyway, I remember reading this study from the University of Montana where I went to graduate school. That’s where I got my master’s. They showed the infertility of a large animal, an elk. These are big, thousand-pound animals. They found infertility, and not only infertility, but only males being born because of the contraceptive drugs being found in the Bitterroot River. I believe it was the Bitterroot. Don’t quote me on that.
The elk population that they studied were becoming infertile and only have, I believe, male offspring. This stuff, if it can affect a thousand-pound animal, what is it doing to your daughter, your son—hormonal system? It’s crazy.
Ryan:
Yeah, I completely agree. It’s a weird example to give; however, the Pill has been available for many decades now and has a tremendous amount of usage. With estrogen not being taken out of the water supply that comes from the Pill on a regular basis, anybody that has a set of eyes can see that the average 18-year-old looks like the average 15-year-old, or the average 15-year-old today looks like what the average 18-year-old did 30 years ago. Why is that?
There’s a lot of other factors that can come into play, but there are chemical effects of what’s passing through the water system and then what’s being ingested by the average person on a day-to-day basis that does affect our health.
Dr. Pompa:
You brought up Flint, Michigan. I had the privilege of going there and actually teaching doctors, really, how to get the lead out of the kids—not the just kids, but everyone who was affected by the water. One of the saddest parts is they didn’t realize that the lead went deep into the tissues, so when the blood samples started becoming normal, they thought the problem was over.
One of the points that I make at my seminar is that Flint, Michigan, when I first heard of it, I said, “Oh, boy, that’s not just a Flint, Michigan problem. That’s a national problem.” It’s because we have doctors that we train all around the country, and we test people. We see massive lead levels. It wasn’t shortly after that that it started coming out. Pennsylvania waters near Pittsburgh, higher than Flint. California waters, higher than Flint. It went through all those things because they started testing water.
Again, it was a mistake made there in Flint, Michigan. However, we have high lead levels in many parts of the water from the piping, the soldering, and it’s very difficult to filter out. Heavy metals are another massive exposure.
You all, actually, at Dime Water test a lot of the water because that’s how you design some of the filters. We’ll talk about that in a moment. What other types of chemicals do you see or even contaminants, heavy metals, etcetera in some of the water you’re testing?
Ryan:
We want to stick with municipal supplies because well supplies become exotic and all over the map. Heavy metals are, as you just mentioned, a major concern. What’s happening, too, is chlorine has traditionally been used. Chloramines, way back in the turn of the 20th century, were used heavily, and then they were pulled back because of the war efforts in World War I and World War II. Chlorine became king, so to speak.
The problem with chlorine is it’s a tremendous killer of biologics. It does a wonderful job getting rid of biologics, but it doesn’t have a lot of staying power. Now, because we’ve had these incidents here and there with Cryptosporidium or other outbreaks throughout the country, municipalities are starting to add ammonia to already chlorinated water to create chloramines.
The difference between chlorine and chloramines is the fact that the chloramines aren’t quite as powerful in terms of being biological killers, but they have great staying power. They’re a headache for us in the industry because we want to remove them as well as the chlorine, but chlorine as a compound is much simpler to deal with.
Then, essentially, what happens, if you’re able to break the chlorine and the ammonia free, then you have to worry about independently dealing with the chlorine, which we know how to do easily, but then getting the ammonia out of the water is another challenge in itself. Municipalities are doing what they can to make sure that the treatment is as aggressive as possible as cheaply and as effectively as they can do it. At the same time, they’re pushing pH up in the water tremendously, too, which is a good thing to some extent.
However, it becomes problematic when just putting that—because they want to minimize the risk of any type of corrosion and any type of ripping away, especially with that older infrastructure we’re dealing with. As the country ages, all the infrastructure ages with it.
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, that’s what happened in Flint. The acidity actually dramatically changed. Then what happened was it started taking what was corroded on the pipes right into the water supply. They didn’t put the additive in, just as you’re saying.
I think one of the problems—we have a lot of people here seeking their health and people looking to get healthy. I really, truly believe that if you’re not cleaning your water, you’re going to have a very difficult time. What you’re saying, that would have a dramatic effect on the microbiome, which we’re realizing controls your immune system, how your brain works, all these factors, and yet people are spending all this money on bacteria, good bacteria, probiotics, etcetera, and paying attention to their diet, and yet your water is literally killing not just the bacteria in your water, but the bacteria in your gut. It’s a big deal.
Warren:
And on your skin.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, that’s true. With that said, I think—gosh, Warren, it was one of the videos that we did, right? We were talking about the other exposures. Our argument was why we believe whole-house filtration is a must. We were talking about—I think the statistic was 11 glasses of water—or, no. One 10-minute shower is equivalent to drinking 10 or 11 chlorinated glasses of water. I don’t know how accurate that is. Obviously, chlorine levels are different everywhere. The point was you breathe in chlorinated water. Ryan, what is the truth around that? Is that still kind of accurate?
Ryan:
That’s an incredibly valid point. I can’t compare the drinking the water to what it is in terms of shower length, but chlorine is less of the concern to drink. Nobody recommends it. Everyone has their experience at some point in life. When they were a child that played at the pool all day, and then by the end of the day, your throat is sore and you’re a little bit hoarse because you were drinking chlorinated water in some way, shape, or form the whole day.
When it comes to the drinking, though, where that water is going is into a pit of acid called your stomach. There’s less of a concern there than when you are in a warm environment with hot water that’s being aerosolized or put into an aerosol form, and then you’re breathing it. Your lungs are much more susceptible.
There’s a reason why mustard gas was so effective in World War I. It’s a lot more dangerous in terms of in a gaseous form than it is in a liquid form. Taking that chlorine out and not giving it the opportunity to become an irritant is incredibly important.
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t know that—how much water today, Ryan, has fluoride still in it? I know there’s been now a push to take fluoride out, but the aluminum industry and other industries want to keep it back in. Fluoride, unlike chlorine, extremely dangerous. Linked to bone cancer in boys. Obviously, even some neurodegenerative conditions. What’s going on with fluoride in water?
Ryan:
It really hasn’t changed in terms of the levels even with the push-back. I don’t really understand the reasoning behind putting it into the water supply. The argument historically has been health of teeth. It keeps your teeth stronger because bones suck up fluoride and make them stronger.
Our take, primarily on fluoride, is it’s less of a concern from a whole-home perspective or worrying about it getting—passing through the semi-permeable membrane called your skin in the shower, but much more of a concern if you’re ingesting it. That’s exactly why dealing with the chlorine from a breathed in whole-home treatment and then having the fluoride removed by our own membrane for point of use is really the best [00:14:37].
Dr. Pompa:
The RO, it does remove the fluoride, which—
Ryan:
Yes, nothing is 100% guarantee. It probably is in the range of 80 to 95%. If you’re already dealing with fluoride levels below one part per million—so somebody has problems trying to visualize that. Imagine a football stadium of a million people. One person is a fluoride molecule. If you take 85% of that person out, you’re getting into the part per billion level, even the part per trillion level. The potential of it being a carcinogen is very minimized on that end. Our own membranes are not perfect, but they’re the best we have out there to deal with [00:15:17].
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t want this is the show to just talk about fluoride. I’ll let Warren speak to this. Fluoride is extremely toxic. You mentioned it hardening the teeth. It’s really a misnomer. It actually creates a softening and a temporary hardening. There’s so much information now on the dangers of fluoride. I guess the question is why are we still putting it in the water? Warren, you can talk about the origins of how it even got in there and why it’s still in there.
Warren:
It comes back to the environmental consultant days. Some environmental consultant like me went to an industry. I’ve done this, personally. I’ve taken old Bunker C oil, and I resold it to be burned in a pulp mill plant, which was contaminating the air quality up in Missoula, Montana. That pulp mill is now out. I just talked to my pastor, who lives there, and said, “How’s the inversions?” He said, “Well, a lot better since the pulp mill’s gone.”
What they do is they go in and say, “Hey, look, if I can take your waste and sell it, or give it away, or ship it to a water treatment plant—which is what I also used to do. I’d take contaminated water, if it was below a certain level of contaminants, I would ship it by a truck to a—this is going down a road, but it’s cool information. I would try to sell that to a water treatment facility—not sell it, get rid of it for free instead of paying a dollar per gallon. You’re thinking hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to do that.
This is what they did. They went to the aluminum industry—it’s one of the industries—there’s lots of industries that use fluoride. This comes out as a waste, either as a waste or a byproduct, and they went—they created this false pretense, because of this one study, that it hardens your teeth, the one that you both spoke of.
Dr. Pompa:
Just because it hardens something doesn’t mean it’s not more brittle, which is actually the case. It could be harder and more brittle. Go ahead.
Warren:
On that one study, they said, “Look, this is safe, and this will help out.” They sold it bill of good to the dentist. They sold bill of goods to the water supply. They made a mistake because they didn’t—they saw the hardening, but they didn’t have the foresight to think further down the road of the effects it has on the thyroid and other things. There wasn’t a long-term study. This is just what we did back then.
We didn’t think it through. We haven’t thought it through with amalgam fillings. We didn’t think it through on asbestos. We’re not thinking it through on fiberglass. We just don’t think it through. We’re not thinking it through on vaccines. We’re not thinking it through in a lot of areas. Then there’s this history. Then when they figure it out, they try to back up, and they really don’t get there.
What we did is we dropped it into the water supply, and now we’re trying to back it back out. Again, it’s a constant battle, but they got rid of it for free. These companies, which had spent a buck a gallon to get rid of it are getting rid of it for free, and that’s how it happened.
Dr. Pompa:
Because it’s so toxic, it was expensive.
Warren:
Yeah, it’s just like amalgam filling. It’s a Class 3 hazardous waste.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it’s incredible. All right, so let’s talk solutions. That’s why we’re here. Both of us just absolutely love your units, and you’re going to find out why we love their units. You all are building some of the best—I believe, the best units out there for the best price. Let’s talk about that.
Warren:
Let me preface this, Dan. This was a long—this was a six-month find.
Dr. Pompa:
I was just going to say Warren has done more homework. I lean to him on this—around this water filtration than anyone I know. Go ahead, Warren.
Warren:
There’re some decent units out there. What I’d looked for is someone who actually knew the science and someone could actually produce a product that could remove fluoride from a whole-house perspective. I was living in Cranberry Township at the time, and there was tons of fluoride in the water. I just didn’t want to deal with it, whether it was in the shower, drinking.
That’s one thing that I do not compromise is drinking water when I’m out, as well, GMO, my gut microbiome. Those are just uncompromised. Will I eat a little bit of sugar every once in a while? Sure. Will I eat some non-organic food? Sure. Get a few pesticides at a low level, I’ll risk that. I won’t risk GMOs. I won’t risk water, especially in Park City. Holy cow, super toxic.
Dr. Pompa:
Heavy metals.
Warren:
Yeah, heavy metals. Researched these guys, and the things that I loved about them, they could do everything I wanted to do. They sent the water sample in for me to make sure that—they can do some bench chemistry and stuff to figure out what’s going on with my water. Really worked with me. Then their units, you didn’t have to replace the cartridges. I was looking at these things. They sell them to you cheap, and then the ongoing replacement or the ongoing care of your filter when they come in every six months, it became highly expensive.
Their units last. They use the best technology that lasts. It’s not ripping off the customer on the maintenance of the units and buying more filters over and over again. I loved that about their units. Your dad, quite honestly, Ryan, Mike, is quite the genius. I talked to him the other day again. This is a company that—I haven’t found anybody that brings high-quality, science-based water quality.
From my background in toxicology, and chemistry, and water filtration, using activated silica beads, and all this stuff, we were able to talk about the chemistry. If you know the chemistry, you can really develop great systems. They wrote the book on it. That’s how we came to find these guys. It was literally—Dan, it was 2006? Yeah, 2006, something like that. We’re pushing 12, 13 years since we got your first unit.
Dr. Pompa:
I took the same whole-house along with me. I move every three years. You know that.
Warren:
Yeah, we’ve never done a podcast, and we were like, “Oh, my gosh!” I was talking to Ryan and your mom just jumped on here before. We talk on the phone all the time. Our listeners just don’t know, one, the importance—they knew the importance, but they don’t know the resources, and they’re buying units—let’s take, for example—Ryan, I’ll just set you loose.
They go into Costco. Now, it’s better than not, but they’re buying an RO system for X, Y, Z—three, four hundred dollars from Costco. Let’s talk about some of these other units and some of the science behind why yours are, let’s just be honest, a little bit superior.
Dr. Pompa:
First with the point of services that you offer, Ryan, and then we’ll—that means your drinking water, point of service. Then we’ll move into whole-house. We already said that we believe everyone should have a whole-house. I believe you guys made it affordable to do so. Why is your point of service unit different than the one you can buy at Costco or anywhere else?
Ryan:
Now, Costco, as you just said, or as Warren just said, the price point is incredibly enticing. You can get into those units for under $200 under normal situations. I actually pulled a picture up on my camera. I was looking through some of my old photos and saw it was on sale for $139 once. That’s crazy inexpensive.
However, this is the catch: It’s very much like printers. There’s a general quality—to sell something that cheaply, you need to cut corners on quality in terms of the components themselves, whether or not an elbow will break, or something will leak, or just from the stand of how long the membrane will last, or the quality it provides while you’re using it. Here’s where they really get you. They want to deal with a point of sale, and then they want you to [00:22:29].
They don’t provide service. There’s no company backing on it. They don’t want you to really bother them on their customer service number. It’s a snap and click type system, where the replacement cartridges will snap in easily, are very user-friendly. The difference is you’re paying five to six [00:22:43] on that snap-in cartridge. Like a printer, they’ll give you the printer for cheap, and then they’ll get you on the ink over time. Your breakeven point will easily be somewhere within the three to four year range.
Then you’re dealing with a system that, if you’re lucky enough to have it still functioning properly, you’re replacing all the components on it at a six to twelve month clip, generally six. Our systems have more common, user-friendly components that can be replaced on an annual basis. The membranes generally last five years as opposed to them recommending you replace it at two or three, something along those lines. That’s something to take—there’re are some other efficiencies associated with it.
We came up with, to our knowledge, the first one-to-one ratio. Most of these systems that come out of Home Depot, come out of Costco put four gallons of water—essentially, what we call concentrate water or drain water, where the contaminants are taking the drain down the drain to one gallon of water as you’re creating the drink. Ours are one-to-one, and you can get it as efficient as three gallons of product water to one gallon of drain, which makes a huge difference to some people in certain places.
Being in southern California, water’s a greater concern here. This is a coastal desert. People seem to forget about that when they want lawns and palm trees, but that’s just the aura of it all. In some parts of the country, it’s not as important, but it is wasteful. Water is going to become more critical as it becomes more contaminated and becomes more expensive. People just don’t feel the need to send more water down the drain.
Dr. Pompa:
Where’s your unit cost, point of service? Where do you start?
Ryan:
Point of service start—a unit that would make 36 gallons per day of water. That seems like a lot of water, but it’s mainly about recovery rate. If you use up a two-gallon tank, how long will it take to fill—is somewhere in the 400 range, and our high-end system is 1,200.
Dr. Pompa:
What’s behind you there because that’s a [00:24:35]?
Ryan:
Yeah, so this is our newest and—just let me know if I’m getting too off kilter here. I’m trying to use the tablet to make it work. This is called our DRO-100 HE Plus. This is that one-to-one ratio. This is also a system that the —the black pump you see in the, I guess would be top right corner for the viewers, is a permeate pump. That is essentially what does a couple things.
It creates that three-to-one ratio of product versus drain. In addition, it improves the quality of the water coming out. When you don’t have back pressure from your storage tank, you get even better quality of water coming out of the membrane because it’s not fighting a pressure dynamic from what’s coming out versus what’s pushing back.
In addition, this system has higher-end pre-filters. Most pre-filters on standard units will have a five micron to take out debris, dirt, and a carbon block to deal with chlorine to protect the membrane. This has a system—it has enhanced carbon, but also has a media we use in our whole-home systems called KDF that deals with the heavy metals. It makes life easier for the membrane on that end.
What you see with the clear container is actually—this is where we get into the pH adjustments. This is an alkaline-based unit where you can raise your pH after the fact. A lot of the [00:25:56] —go ahead, Warren.
Warren:
I was going to say, because RO units, they become weakly acidic, right? You don’t want to drink weakly acidic water, so you put a little bit of the alkalinity back into it. The alkalinity capacity, it’s not going to be like super drinking alkaline water, but it’s going to bring it up to—there’s a big difference between alkalinity and buffering capacity.
You can have alkalinity, but it can be changed really easily back and forth from six to eight just with a drop of water. It makes it a lightly buffered alkaline water, just to make that clear. It’s not going to drive your alkalinity—like Dr. Pompa would say, you don’t want to drive your alkalinity in one direction. It’s lightly alkaline. Just [00:26:35].
Dr. Pompa:
Right because there’s all these new alkalinity units out there that are making people’s guts alkaline. That’s a negative. This is just to bring it back to where a normal water [00:26:43].
Ryan:
Right, what we’ve experienced for the most part—what we’re experiencing is we’re at the mercy of the delivery water from the city, wherever that city may be. If some cities are trying to push their pH up a little bit to deal with those corrosion issues—we’re in situations now where these alkaline units are still useful, but when a city once upon a time, let’s say, delivered at neutral, 7 pH, and then the RO unit itself would [00:27:08] it down to 6.5. You’re weakly acidic. You don’t necessarily want to drink that.
You prefer to be a little bit above neutral or neutral. Then these units were great to then bring that up, but you were only getting about one pH adjustment upward with a sacrificial cartridge like this. In order to get more aggressive, which we don’t recommend because the magic point seems to be about 8.3. That’s when you get to the natural point of pH.
When you start getting above that, especially when you get into the 10 range, you’re dealing with hydroxyl OH, which is way too aggressive. It’s too much of a good thing. I’m not going to call it a craze by any means because it’s definitely more beneficial than more acidity, but—like Vitamin D many years ago.
The more Vitamin D, the better. Too much of anything is going to be a problem. A system like this allows you to adjust. Let me try to point this out for everybody. There’s a dial here in this spot. That allows you to adjust it. It’s not just purely about the pH. It’s about taste.
We’re all unique, and we all have different tastes. Some people love alkaline water; some people don’t. Some people feel as though there’s a chalky taste when there’s too much. You can dial it in and out however you want it to adjust pH from a number perspective or taste desire from that perspective. That’s what makes it so user-friendly to the public.
Dr. Pompa:
You mentioned something that I’ve never seen a unit have like this. It has the KDF in it, which you taught me because my concern—I had a concern that these units have got more efficient, but it can, at times, create bacteria in the tank, either from the back end or the front end. The KDF actually, from the front end, eliminates that because there’s a natural antiseptic in the KDF. Explain that a little bit.
Ryan:
Yeah, KDF is essentially a biocide. It does kill any biologics that get through, which, obviously, is applied in our whole-home units and on this end. There’s two sides of an RO. ROs aren’t closed systems. They are from a standpoint that you’re getting the water from a city, and then you’re sending the water through a unit, but remember, at the end of an RO system, you do have a faucet that sits on your sink.
Individual customers have to have some care of that. They have to ensure they don’t sneeze on it or touch it with raw chicken hands if they’re cutting up raw chicken, things like that. There is potential [00:29:29] —
Dr. Pompa:
They put their mouth—
Ryan:
Yeah, or don’t have your cat lick it. Our cats love our OR water. It’s like have them love it in a bowl, not out of the faucet.
Dr. Pompa:
[00:29:37] sterile—
Warren:
Love it in a bowl. That’s good. You’re witty.
Dr. Pompa:
Cats are [00:29:42] my children.
Warren:
I’ve seen Simon. I’ve seen him. Simon’s done it. Everybody loves Simon. That’s his son, anyway.
Ryan:
I thought that was his cat. I’m sorry.
Warren:
No, they have two cats, but Simon’s kind of like a cross between a dog/cat and a boy.
Dr. Pompa:
He’s right.
Warren:
He’s Superman.
Ryan:
Childhood, we all miss it to some extent. Anyway, so the KDF does play that role with killing any biologics that may get in. Biologics on the front end can contaminate the membrane. Biologics on the back end going backwards can contaminate the tank. We have solutions for both of that if people have concerns with that.
The main concern about tanks—I’ve been with the company for years. I joined the family business in January of ’16, and I’ve dealt with hundreds of ROs. Obviously, the company and all the people in it have dealt with thousands. There are rarely occasions where systems do get contaminated, so I’m not trying to fear monger by any means about these. You just have to be diligent about how you treat that faucet, knowing that there’s pure water coming out.
Germs don’t know up from down. If you put a germ in any spot, it’ll grow in the direction it can grow. We rarely see it as a problem. Generally, when it becomes a problem, algae forms, and it’s noticeable. The one customer I’ve ever dealt with that did have an issue, they just said, “Don’t even sanitize the tank. Just replace it.” Never had a problem since. That was a relatively new system, not something that was five, seven, ten years old that had that issue. I have a feeling that they accidentally contaminated it.
Dr. Pompa:
Your units are taking care of it anyway. The KDF is amazing for pulling heavy metals out. You have, of course, the membrane, and of course, you have a pre-filter, charcoal, but the KDF is one extra step.
Ryan:
Yes, absolutely. The amount that KDF cleans, based on their testing, is 98%.
Warren:
Wow!
Ryan:
People want to say, “Well, what’s 100%?” Let’s look to those funny commercials where they say, “Hey, this drinking water has an acceptable amount of lead.” It’s funny, and it’s true, but we’re already talking in the part per billion level. When people say, “Ooh, if there’s any lead, it’s problematic.” If you turn part per billion into part per trillion—go back to the example of how many people are in a football stadium. Now you have one person in a trillion.
The only time we use that number is when we’re talking our national debt. That’s a tremendously small amount that has very little risk there. We’re honest about it. We don’t want to make any claims that anything is ever going to take 100% of anything out. There’re certain things you can measure, and even measuring devices have their limitations.
Warren:
Can you walk through this particular unit and just show what each thing takes out and why?
Ryan:
Step by step?
Warren:
Yeah, I think that would be really great to just—
Ryan:
Okay, yeah, step-by-step. Let me get this thing working.
Warren:
I think this is important. We gave them the cat licking tip. They’ve never heard that before.
Ryan:
That’s kind of a strange one that—yeah, it’s unusual.
Warren:
That’s a huge tip. The viewers are going to love this, and listeners.
Ryan:
Is that a good position there for visual?
Warren:
That’s perfect. That’s perfect.
Ryan:
Okay, so we actually color code our lines, too. What we have is a situation where—okay, so you’ve got—your feed water is essentially coming in here. We don’t have a connection here, but this would be where it’s coming from your cold water line from under your sink. This is the sediment filter, taking out the sticks and stones, so to speak. There’s dirt in water. People generally don’t see it, but if you took hundreds and thousands of gallons of water and let it all settle out, there is dirt in your water. They ever have to do work on streets or whatever, they have no way to flush it out. It gets sent to the customers.
From the sediment filter, you get into the KDF, as we discussed, and then enhanced carbon here, which is a higher level than standard coconut carbon. Removes VOCs. Does an excellent job with chloramines, also. From there, this is just an auto shutoff valve to make the system automated. You don’t have to turn the RO system on or off. Once the water gets to a certain pressure, as opposed to what’s being stored in the tank, it auto shuts off so you don’t perpetually have water going in the drain and waste water.
From there, this is a little, mini ESF. ESF is a system in our whole-home system that deals with calcium scale, the hardness, the effects you have on your plumbing. If anyone’s ever experienced that white buildup around their faucets and their shower heads, that’s calcium. That’s a natural component of water ripping away at the earth as it passes through the earth in the natural ecological cycle. That helps put the calcium into suspension and then makes the membrane easier to deal with.
Then we’re coming up to the bottom of the membrane. This is essentially the heart, or more specifically, the brain of the unit in the fact that the RO membrane is what’s doing all the removal of dissolved solids, about a 90%, 92% removal that is then sending the drain water—
Warren:
That takes out all the pharmaceuticals and most—like 90% of the pharmaceuticals and stuff like that, right?
Ryan:
Right, right. For the most part, what comes through these RO membranes—when you get in the commercial level, you’ll be dealing with 99 to 100 percent removal, but that’s very high-pressure pumps and bigger systems. This does about 92%. What gets through here are generally monovalent ions. You’re talking about chloride and sodium, essentially elements that have one electron floating around them for those that want to take a trip down memory lane back to their chemistry class.
Bigger compounds, such as pharmaceuticals, such as chloramines get blocked, and they essentially get sent to the black drain, which comes in this direction. The drain and the product, which I’ll get to in a minute, is what drives this permeate pump. I’m trying to get an angle here.
The blue lines are then—that’s essentially considered a pure water. At that point, a blue line comes off the membrane, off the product side, it splits off. One goes into the alkalinity cartridge, and one goes around it to allow you that bypass if you’re choosing not to push all the water through, or you can choose to push all the water through. It’s a personal choice on that end.
From that point, it goes into the permeate pump. The way this allows the much higher ratio is water will flow to the drain more aggressively on standard reverse osmosis units, but in this specific example, water fills voids on either side. Then it essentially actuates. It essentially only will let 1/3 on this side go to drain while three parts, essentially, are going to product.
Then from there, you’re on the other half of the shutoff. Once again, diaphragm piece. There’s a spot here that is tough to see, but this is where the tank would normally be attached where there’s a storage tank. You’re either coming off the membrane through the system, or you’re going into the storage tank.
Then over here is what goes up to the faucet. You have enhanced carbon filter on the back end. That is purely a polish. It’s not doing any heavy lifting because all the contaminants, all the chlorine is already gone. Carbon is a beautiful polish device, and that’s why it’s used on the back end to just put a polish in case there’s any tastes that come up, anything from storage in the tank, or what have you. Then you’ve got a clean, delicious water at your faucet.
Warren:
Yeah, and that’s what helps me deal with the polypropylene bladder. I’m going to go to that level. They’re pretty inert. Polypropylene is a very inert material, but there might be a plastic that comes off on there, and the carbon is going to grab those organic compounds that would come off of there. It makes me happy knowing that there’s nothing left.
Ryan:
I completely agree. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s still a man-made material that we have to store water in. We need some kind of a storage device because the speed at which this makes water, even with a 100 gallon per day membrane—nobody wants to sit for 35 seconds to watch their eight ounces of water fill. They want their glass of water so they can walk away, and let the system refill the tank, and move on.
It’s the same concept where that carbon is put in place to deal with anything that could come off of that tank bladder. That’s where there’s short-sightedness when it comes to bottled water. Water sits inside of a plastic bottle. I don’t care if it’s BPA-free and whatever other chemicals it claims not to be there, but water sitting in a bottle that goes through hot/cold cycles throughout the supply chain.
Then by the time you get it, and bring it back to your house, and then cool it in your refrigerator, or have it get heated up in your garage, who knows what that plastic is spitting into that water at that point? There’s no way to do anything about it at that point. The last time it was cleaned was when the company bottled it for you.
Dr. Pompa:
This unit’s one of your better units, and it’s still under a $1,000 unit, correct?
Ryan:
Correct, yes, 995 right now. It’s our newest unit, too. We wanted to create a slightly different setup. Traditional systems as you’d see from a Costco system—I’ll just glance quickly at this—are generally in this configuration down here with this one, something along the lines of having housings on the bottom. This is another system that we sell that’s even a little bit—few bells and whistles, a little bit higher end. As I had mentioned to the two of you before the video, that the bang for your buck on this one is what I consider to be [00:38:47].
Dr. Pompa:
Warren, are we offering any special for our viewers?
Warren:
Yeah, you can go to our website, RevelationHealth.com\water and then you can use the code WATER10 to take 10% off of any units that we sell. We sell all three of their lower quality, if you will, but still way better than Costco RO units, plus that new unit, and then the—what’s that one called, the really fancy one?
Ryan:
You talking about the one I just displayed or the one on the bottom?
Warren:
Yes, the one on the bottom.
Ryan:
Nature’s Balance.
Warren:
Nature’s Balance, okay, and the other one’s like DRO or something.
Ryan:
DRO-100 [00:39:29] —
Warren:
That’s actually the one—that’s the new one I had in my other house, but I just put in that new unit in my house for my new one. Just so you know, those other units, I’ve changed the filters out twice because that Nature’s Balance lasts a long time. Some of those membranes are like two to three years. Lots of water have to move through there. There’s a little counter on there.
Man, I’ve had those units now for, I have to estimate at 11 years, and I’ve only had to change the filters out twice in 11 years because I only had, at one point, just my wife and I. Then when I had one kid—for a bigger family, you use more water, and that’s just how it goes.
You can also call—this will move into our next part where we look at a whole-house unit. They can actually test your water and see what you need. Is it contaminated with fluoride? They can do that in bench chemistry for you. You can actually give Kyle, his brother, a call. It’s a family business. You can call him at 760-734-5787. Tell him you’ve watched the Cell TV podcast, and they’ll give you 10% off the units, as well.
Dr. Pompa:
Actually, we’ll put the number because Warren said that pretty fast. We’ll put the number on the screen.
Warren:
Yeah, 760-734-5787, it’s showing up right now on the screen. I can see it happening. The other question is the KDF does more than just heavy metals. Let’s get into the whole-house units because they use a lot of KDF, and they do some—your dad has, I don’t know—how many patents does your dad have?
Ryan:
There’s just one patent.
Warren:
On that particular—
Ryan:
Yes, on that system. It specifically is what makes it stand out from other systems. I’ll walk through the details. Let me try to get this within the shot here. It’s difficult because it’s a—let’s see if I go up and down a little bit.
Warren:
Yeah, there it is.
Ryan:
Yeah, let me try to keep an angle here. This is a whole-home system. This reverse dynamic [00:41:26].
Warren:
No, it looks good. You’re good.
Ryan:
This is the type of system that goes on your point of entry on your home. Generally, people have their point of entry in their garage. Older homes have it outside somewhere. That’s the norm. This system then treats every drop of water coming into the home, so your showers. Affects all the water going into your appliances, your sinks, etcetera.
The couple things that make this stand out—just as a quick little history of whole-home treatment, traditional water softeners where somebody is putting salt into a brine tank were developed to deal with hardness scale. Primarily, the fact that that calcium that I had mentioned earlier was problematic for plumbing, problematic for fixtures, problematic for appliances. Softeners were developed to deal with those. They’ve been around for well over 100 years or at least pushing 100 years.
Those systems essentially do an ion exchange. They will take sodium that comes out of NaCl that’s created in that brine solution in that secondary tank, and they will coat a resin with that when it goes through that cycle. Then the calcium knocks the sodium into the water, and then the calcium’s captured. It’s essentially an A and B process. Every X number of days the system will regenerate and put new sodium on there, knock the calcium in the drain, and then it captures, and it regenerates, and captures, regenerates on, and on, and on. Those systems last a decent long time.
The downside is you have to lug the salt in. You have to bring it in. You’re putting a lot of sodium into the water supply. You’re putting a slight amount of sodium into your drinking water supply in a house. This is long before ROs became popular. You have to waste the water when the system regenerates and backwashes. Once again, water waste. There’s a valve on it that has to change the direction of flow. Those break. They need to be replaced and repaired, and the cost is high.
In this day and age, most of the companies out there are competing at a level where they’re putting carbon filters, large carbon filters. Pretty much everybody’s dealt with Brita, or something small, or a Pur filter that goes on a faucet. Just scale that up, essentially. Just scale it up. In the case of the point of use system like a Brita, you just use it up. They give you a capacity, 300 gallons in a certain amount of time, and then you throw it away, and you put a new one in.
The systems that go on whole homes essentially do have to backwash in a similar fashion to a traditional water softener, and that carbon needs to be lifted up. In that environment, people think of water as soothing, but it’s a pretty aggressive environment. Carbon, if it was never backwashed, would be pulverized and turned into powder and, essentially, your plumbing at some point.
Once again, valve, power, water, and drain. Carbon has about a 50% capacity of KDF in terms of chlorine removal. An average carbon system of roughly the same size will have to be rebedded in five to seven years. Our system, being the Aquafer, is all KDF. That is the primary and the only media we have in there. Deals with heavy metals, is a biocide, kills any biologics that may get through.
That is unusual because cities, once again, do a great job chlorinating and chloriminating the water tremendously to ensure there’s no biological problems, but there’s never a guarantee of anything, especially people that may get surface water. Certain times of the year, there’s growths around areas that pull from lakes, etcetera. The KDF has, as I mentioned before, 2X capacity.
This system has—we conservatively give a 10+ year estimate on its life. For the most part—an example for 2018 is we had two customers come back. They had their first generation Aquafer they had purchased in 2002 and 2003. They noticed something with the water after 15 and 16 years, respectively. They called. We’re like, “Yep, it’s showing a little bit of chlorine, and the media’s exhausted.” They went on the generation two, and they bought their next one.
Fifteen years, the system got installed and didn’t need to be touched. They forgot about it. No maintenance. No wasted water over that period of time. The portion of it that is patented is called the ESF. It’s environmental scale-free. That is the system that makes it compete with traditional softeners. Those carbon filters don’t deal with calcium scale in any way, shape, or form. Calcium scale will eat away at your copper.
There are plumbers that replumb homes after 20 or 30 years, and copper walls are paper thin sometimes. It’s just a matter of time before a pin-hole leak occurs, and you have a leak behind a wall, and your drywall gets destroyed or even worse if it’s a slab leak or something, depending on the area of the country in which your home is built.
That calcium is essentially put into suspension. It’s not removed. It’s put into a crystallized form. As long as it goes to drain within 72 hours, it has no effect. You don’t get that calcium buildup and that scaling on your faucets or on your shower fixtures. It makes your appliances generally last about 50 to 100 percent longer than they normally will because they’re not getting glommed up with that damaging calcium.
Warren:
Let me give you a testimony to that. I have very hard water here where I live. The house that I had, we ran our dishes without one of your units. We installed the Aquafer, and the amount of—I mean, our dishes were white. I’m taking white, ruined. We had to put them in vinegar to just fix them. It was a absolute mess.
We didn’t put any vinegar into the washer, did nothing. There was just a little bit of spotting left on the dish using your unit. That’s how effective it was. Now, what I also did is I put a teaspoon—or more than that—probably a tablespoon of—my wife does. I actually don’t load the dishes very often, every once in a while. When I do it, I dump the whole thing because more is better, right, Dr. Pompa? More is better. More vinegar, yeah! That got rid of the rest.
This is real. It really does work. It’s amazing technology. You mentioned a KDF, which is very, very expensive raw material. You have to know that. They put that into their RO unit, the one that they explained, so that it’s not only getting out the heavy metals, but it’s taking out—what percentage of chlorine does the KDF take out again?
Ryan:
Ninety-nine point nine percent. We don’t say 100 because there’s the chance that drip of water got past everything without touching media, but [00:47:50].
Warren:
If you’re dealing with the RO unit, you’re that 99.9999 chlorine out. Between the carbon, the KDF, the RO, you’re laughing when [00:48:01].
Dr. Pompa:
I can’t live without my unit, man. I’ve traveled, like I said, with every house. I have the old, black one, remember? It wasn’t not nice looking. [00:48:09]. I want that one. How much is that whole-house unit? What do they range?
Ryan:
This is a standard eight, which would be roughly in the—as a list price, in $2,400 range, and then, obviously, [00:48:24] —
Warren:
That’s a deal.
Ryan:
Plumbers love these systems because they don’t have to run a drain line. They don’t have to worry about where they’re going to find the power to plug into it. It’s just an in and out, and it’s done. These systems are sized based on how many people live in the house and how many full showers are there.
We want to ensure that systems will support the hypothetical situation where you are maxing out everything in the house. You have family visiting over the holidays, and you have three showers going at once, and the dishwasher’s running, and the washing machine’s running, and there’s four sinks running. Every drip of water coming out of all of those is treated. We scale it appropriately that way.
We won’t oversize them, either. There’s plenty of examples where some of the people in southern California live in these areas with 10,000 square foot houses and two people, and they say, “Give me the biggest—best thing you got.” We’re like, “We can’t oversize this because you will not get proper water left just through your usage. We don’t want to create a system that in five years isn’t as effective because it’s channelized, and water isn’t passing through appropriately.” We’re very diligent about that.
Dr. Pompa:
My cry for everybody to get a whole-house unit is—Warren, remember in the video that we did, the most toxic appliance in the home is your dishwasher because all of the toxins actually end up on the dishes that you drink and eat off of. People don’t realize that that’s a hidden source of contamination. The only way you’re going to filter that is a whole-house system. The KDF units that you guys have are the best.
Talk just a little bit about—last thing here—just about why some people might want to test their water—that you would build a unit specifically for their home, which is definitely really good, especially for well water. Tell them about that.
Ryan:
Yeah, we refuse to give anyone any kind of recommendation for a unit on a well supply unless we do a test. As I said, there’s exotic dynamic that plays up at wells. When it comes to cities, actually, we don’t test people’s water. Going back to giving some credit to municipalities is they do any water reports. We can take those water reports, look at their test samples. This system will handle 99% of the water supplies out there. That’s why there’s really not much value to it.
We know the cities are bringing it to level X of quality, and we just bring it the last mile in terms of improving it from there. There’s rarely a situation where we need that. Some people have unique situations where they live in community wells or something where it might be a mix of city and a mix of well water. Then we will look at it from that perspective. This system is meant for municipal supplies. We don’t put it in well supplies, obviously, because it doesn’t deal with things that are coming out of the well.
Dr. Pompa:
If you have a well, then you’ll build it specifically for the water [00:51:14].
Warren:
I remember talking to your dad the other day. They even work with—they’re putting a unit in and they don’t have much pressure, so they put pressure pumps in. They’ll work with you to make sure that your toilets are flushing, your showers are good when—because there’s a pressure drop. More complicated systems like that with your well—his dad’s an engineer, so they really know this stuff.
They’re the best-kept secret, Dr. Pompa. Everyone else is out there talking about their water filters on Facebook, and putting up Facebook ads, and saying, “Get this.” It’s a must-have. Save up. Get that. You’re eating organic food, and you’re polluting yourself with all this stuff. It makes no sense, none at all. Give these guys a call. We got the phone number. Cell TV, 10% off on that $2,400 unit. You save 240 bucks. That’s awesome, and it’s going to last 10 to 15 years. I don’t want to do the math, but it’s 100 bucks a year or something like that.
Dr. Pompa:
Actually, so many people watching this, they think, oh, I can’t afford that. They’re buying bottled water. We’re not going to have time to get into that, so many issues.
Warren:
You’re drinking out of plastic. My kids—and you’re the same way, Dan. You threw away all their plastic. They’re drinking out of glass, breaking glass. Water is a non-compromisable thing. Feminization of boys, and girls and hormone issues, and behavior problems, and autism, and you can just go on and on how sensitive children are today, and we’re feeding them this water. When I hear someone, “I’ll just have tap,” I cringe. I’m not the most anal gal out there. I said gal—guy.
Dr. Pompa:
I judge them—
Warren:
I’ve been feminized, Dr. Pompa. I just called myself a gal for drinking plastic as a kid.
Dr. Pompa:
I have to end with this: Thanks for your service. You’re a military guy. You’re an Army guy. Appreciate that.
Ryan:
Oh, yeah, I was a long time ago. It’s been quite a few years, 13 years, since I separated, but yeah. It was an honor to do it.
Warren:
That’s awesome, Ryan.
Dr. Pompa:
More people need to appreciate that. Ryan, thank you. Just a wealth of knowledge, you and your family there. Family-owned business, man, we love supporting you guys. We love your units. Thanks for being on the show finally.
Ryan:
Yes, thank you so much for having us. You made a good point. Our Achilles heel is the fact we are too much of a well-kept secret, and we’re trying to change that.
Warren:
Thank you. Send our love to your dad, and Ryan, and your mom, and just, really, thank you guys. Thank you.
Ryan:
Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Dr. Pompa:
You got it, man.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Don’t forget to check out our show notes if you would like more information about the Dime water treatment systems. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 AM Eastern. We truly appreciate your support.
You can always find us at CellularHealing.TV, and please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review, or sharing the show with anyone who may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
