Permanent water treatment
December 1st 2006 "Two-thirds of the population lives and works in areas where the water is hard,"explains Mike Potter, product development manager of WaterMATIC."For many years, the preferred choice has been the introduction of water conditioners to the system in an attempt to reduce and control these problems, but we have developed the KalGUARD+ unit to provide an alternative and more effective solution to limescale." WaterMATIC's KalGUARD+ unit is an easy to install electrolytic scale inhibitor that incorporates easy to use but sophisticated controls to match the level of treatment to suit the local hardness of the water.KalGUARD+ has been shown to reduce limescale formation on heating surfaces by up to 80% in independent testing at Cranfield University. "The KalGUARD+ doses the water with a specific amount of dissolved zinc (a totally safe metal), tailored for each individual site,"explains Mike. "The zinc process gives a permanent treatment effect as the zinc remains in the water and flows anywhere the water does. Once the calcium/ magnesium salts in the water have combined with the zinc, it will remain in that state permanently. "Other water conditioners use various differing types of 'field effect' technologies (usually either magnetic or electrostatic fields, or high frequency pulsating fields) and their overall effect is to put an 'electro-static' charge on particles in the water. This effect will dissipate due to numerous factors including time,water turbulence from tight plumbing, agitation as water passes through valves as well as other stray magnetic fields created by electric motors/pumps and other electrical equipment found in all building projects. Because this charge effect is diluted/eliminated', it is therefore, in most situations, inappropriate to install temporary effect devices on the incoming main." He continues,"The KalGUARD+ can be installed in different and more convenient places on a system due to its ability to treat the water permanently. In most new installations, the design of the system would mean that the unit can be installed on the smaller incoming mains supply feeding storage tanks while temporary treatment from other 'conditioning' units should only be installed after the break tank and booster set. As the booster line is predominantly larger than the incoming main it would therefore require a larger sized unit that logically has a higher cost.Often to give complete protection, these products have to be installed in more than one position to guarantee effect, which again adds to the cost." When an enquiry from a large UK design and build company came to WaterMATIC, it was able to save the company a considerable amount of money, as Mike explains:"The original specification asked for three 'popular' conditioning units to cope with a flow rate which would be the equivalent to one of our 4" or 6" units. After calling the design engineer I found out that he was looking to install the units on the 108mm boosted line, which would require a similar sized unit. When I told him that the KalGUARD+ should be installed on the 54mm supply to the break tanks and requoted for this he was impressed by the cost saving. His original request would have cost around £20,000 but when using the KalGUARD+ in the correct position it came to an approx £6000! The engineer added that this was also a good bit of 'value engineering' that his client would appreciate!" More articles from Watermatic: | 
