Hi Matt – thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I admire and appreciate your experience – both in the plumbing industry and with this tech. I was not aware of this tech being applied to the oil industry. Pretty neat.

I do know that when I tested this tech the accretion of hard minerals on a test surface was not noticeably different than untreated hard water. Maybe the way this is executed in oil rigs is different or perhaps the amount of scaling allowed to consider this tech acceptable makes this not as useful in the residential application. Not sure.

Shashank

Hi Sheila – unfortunately I don’t have firsthand experience with that valve but Johnson Controls does have a good reputation. I also understand the issue with the Flo auto shutoff device seeing false positives and shutting off water when it shouldn’t have. The issue with most of these companies like Moen and Johnson Controls is that while they will likely get the hardware right as they have a lot of experience with the mechanical parts, the software written for these products is where things end up breaking or not working ideally. SW is not a core strength as it’s just too new to these companies and the engineering+product focus hasn’t really transitioned to SW in the same way.

Shashank

Hi there – yes, if the hardness in your water is not mild then the Aquasana conditioners will not be sufficient. You need a salt-based softener that uses ion exchange to remove the calcium (and magnesium) from your water.

I am looking into getting a Berkey, but will also look into a few of the things you mentioned. The product was suggested by Healthwyze. https://healthwyze.org/search/results.cgi?)QUERY=berkey
I no longer believe anything that EWG puts on their web site. Lead free mama Tamara Rubin has been trying to get them to remove their verifications on children’s products with lead. https://tamararubin.com/2022/12/template-letter-for-lead-safe-mama-readers-to-use-to-write-ewg-asking-them-to-remove-lead-contaminated-products-from-their-site/

Here is one of the products she has tested. https://tamararubin.com/2025/07/ewg-verified-baby-sunscreen/. She is currently working hard to let people know about EWG and their practices.

At our former house we had Moen Flo detector which we were not happy with at all, it was constantly shutting off our water even after setting the parameters to levels that would give us more lea way for a shut off, then the day we moved the washer faucet was left on a drizzling for hours & the Moen never alerted me. grrrrr.

Thanks for the question Marisa. You should nearly always filter water – a lot of these systems do the filtration for you, however, which is convenient.

Hope that helps,
Mr Water Geek

Hello – You can use distilled water for alkaline water but would be hard to make much hydrogen with it. Making hydrogen through electrolysis requires water to have enough minerals in it to allow for an electric current to be conducted. Distilled water is pure water which makes electrolysis virtually impossible.

Hope that helps,
Shashank

There is something wrong with that specific filter – your PPM count should NOT go up after filtration. Most likely it’s a leaky filter cartridge. Sometimes filter cartridges can also not “sit” well in the filter housing and not seal. This is rare in my experience.