My name is Jamie Hockemeyer with the Michigan DEQ
out of the Flint field office.
This presentation is more based on residential tips
and how to maintain good water quality
and things that you should be doing in your own home
to make sure that you have good water quality
and so on and so forth.
This one, I expect a lot more questions,
so it might be a little short,
but I'd like to answer any questions that I can.
So we'll start off with what is water quality, right?
You know water, we think of, we want it to be clear,
we want it to taste good, we want it to smell good
you know have no smell, actually.
So when it comes to water quality there's
many different components to it,
from color and taste, but then we have compliance
and regulations and contaminants, right?
Lead is a contaminant in water.
So there's a lot of things that are done at the water plant
that are done through distribution system optimization,
to remove these contaminants, to make the water quality
higher and better and in compliance and under regulations
and all that kind of stuff.
So when it comes to water use, there's
a couple different things.
Cold water, that's what we think of
as consuming water, right?
You want to use cold water to heat up to make spaghetti.
You want to use all that kind of stuff as a normal practice
and we're talking more outside of Flint.
You know in Flint we still want to stress
the importance of using filters for cooking and drinking
and all that kind of stuff.
But when it comes to hot water, and I've met many people
that didn't know this, but hot water is not for consumption.
Hot water's for hygiene.
Hopefully nobody is taking hot water out of the tap
and making tea or something right there.
They really should be using cold water then heating it up
to put a tea bag in.
That's a very important thing.
Hot water has some different things to it.
It goes through a water heater, it can sit for long times,
it can have a different taste or smell
which comes from the avenue that it's heated up
and it's put inside of a water heater
and it travels through and usually hot water
is only used in the morning when you take a shower, right?
Or maybe you have a hot load of laundry
going through a laundry machine.
But for here in Flint, again, we're stressing the uses
of filters for water you're going to consume.
For drinking, cooking, but washing including your dishes,
all those type of things, you can use
unfiltered water for those, okay?
So one of the biggest things we want to talk about
when it comes to water quality in your own home
are things like water stagnation.
How long does water sit?
If you go on a vacation to the Bahamas for a week,
when you come home it'd be a very good idea
to flush the toilet a few times, run your
kitchen and your bathroom faucets.
Just to pencil with the water for two to five minutes.
That will allow a few gallons of water
to go through the entire home,
it'll pull any water sitting in your service line
through that faucet, it'll bring fresh water
from the main into your home.
It's very important.
Even a weekend, some of the things you want to do,
you want to open that tap and let that water flow through.
Some people may have heard of a chlorine residual before.
We add chlorine to water to disinfect water,
we want to stop any bad bacteria like E. coli
from getting to you.
If water sits for a long time, it can lose this
chlorine residual and that's a very bad thing.
We want that water to move.
That water out in the main has chlorine in it,
bring that fresh water with chlorine and phosphates
into your home.
Who's ever heard of that before?
Is that a normal practice if you're out for a long time
to come home and turn on a faucet or so?
Some people know those things and some maybe had
to turn a faucet on, you're gone for a week,
come back and some brown water will come out
but then it goes clear.
That's why we want to keep that water moving
and flush it after a long stagnation.
So water heaters.
Water heater is usually set about 165 degrees,
it's very hot in there, it's a very interesting environment.
A water heater basically is a big steel can
and the inside of it is lined with glass.
That's how the water can sit in there and be
heated and cooled over time and it won't get to the metal.
In a water heater we use a magnesium rod,
it's an actual big piece of magnesium, the metal,
it goes in the water heater and that helps
inhibit corrosion, stop corrosion
inside of that water heater.
But over time, and you may have seen hey, you know,
this water heater is warrantied by the manufacturer
for 10 years, right?
They're saying okay, that magnesium rod inside your
water heater will stop corrosion for 10 years.
So it's a good practice to make sure that
you're following your manufacturer's guidelines
because if that hot water heater sits
for more than 10 years, it doesn't have that
magnesium rod, it can start to corrode on the inside
and you may get bad water quality.
You may see some colored water or some ironish water
come through and you'll smell that.
It's a very good idea to flush that and to,
again, stay inside that manufacturer's guidelines.
One of the things that every manufacturer states is
there should be some type of flushing.
Every year maybe you flush a gallon or two of water
out of this little flushing valve at the bottom, okay?
Sometimes sediment can build up down there.
Inside that can, if that rod's gone, maybe
some corrosion will take place and it'll fall to the bottom.
Little pieces of metal will fall to the bottom
and you want to get that out of there.
What you don't want, is you don't want to be
using the hot water and that material will flow up
and into the pipes and out your faucet.
Who's ever flushed their own water heater before?
That's something definitely, it even states
on the water heater when you should do these things,
all that information.
You can go online and find that as well.
Again, with stagnation and flushing your water heater,
these are different tips that we can say for you to
have better water quality in your home.
One of the biggest things that a municipality,
a water department, a system, faces
is what's known as a cross connection.
That's the technical term for it.
Any piping arrangement which allows a potable water system
to be connected to a non-potable.
Basically what they're saying is can water from a drum
that's been outside, it's full of dirt or whatever else,
can that water ever get back into the plumbing of your home
or back into that water main?
We go to big lengths to stop these things, okay?
Leaving a hose in that drum with that valve open,
there could be a potential that that material,
that water in that bucket, could get
sucked back into your home and you could be
opening up your faucet in the home
and you could get water from that bucket
coming out of that faucet, okay?
It's a very low probability, you have to have
a water main break or some situation.
In laboratories and schools we put
cross connection devices in on all the sinks.
That way when a hose is in that slop sink
and there's some acid or whatever there,
it can't get up and into the drinking fountain
in the same room or something, okay?
So these are things you shouldn't do.
Don't leave a hose in a bucket of even car wash water, okay?
Take that hose out and hang it back up
on the outside of that hose reel, okay?
One of the other things that, as an operator I dealt with,
is there's always a situation where someone calls
and say hey, all of a sudden I used a tremendous
amount of water, and I only use X amount of water
every month for the last 30 years and all of a sudden
I've used ton more, what's going on here?
As an operator, and this is something that the city,
call them and talk to them about it,
what usually happens is a toilet is running
or there's a leak somewhere.
When you get a big sudden high usage
that just comes up out of nowhere,
one of the very first things to do
is check the water meter.
Who knows where their water meter is in their house?
But one of the things, if you go down into your basement
and you don't know where your water meter is,
try to find where the pipes come together.
A pipe should come down in a wall somewhere.
Find that water meter, make it so it's accessible.
You got to be able to get to that, okay?
One of the very first things you can look for
is on every water meter, there's this little dial right here
and this is a leak dial.
It's an indicator that water is moving.
Even the most minute water, like a toilet running,
this little dial will spin and it will spin rapidly.
So if you're at home and you're by yourself
and there's nothing running, no dishwasher,
no washing machine, no showers on, and that dial's running
that indicates that water's moving somewhere.
There's a leak, there's a toilet running,
something's going on.
So this is the time to find out where that is,
stop that water use, okay?
Let's say you can't find the leak, anywhere
and you say I don't know where it's going.
How can I test if it's my toilet that's leaking?
There's two things you can do.
You can go to the local hardware store
and you could buy a dye pack.
It's a little packet of dye that goes in
the back of the toilet in the big bowl.
What'll happen is that blue dye, without flushing the toilet
all of a sudden blue dye will come through
into the toilet bowl itself, and you know that
water's getting past that flapper in there
and that water is running and that's where
the water is going.
If you don't have that, you could always use
blue food coloring.
Dump some back there and come back five,
10 minutes later, 15 minutes later, and look
to see if that's starting to turn color
cuz then we know hey, that's where the leak is.
We can fix that real quick.
A five dollar little flapper is a lot cheaper
than a $200 water bill, right?
These are all things that every homeowner,
this is a tip for every homeowner no matter where you live
to stay on top of your water quality,
and your water bills, and all of these different things.
So plumbing materials.
Who's ever went in their basement and looked at
huh, I wonder what my house has for a water line?
Who's ever done that before, yeah?
In copper, usually you'll see copper which is down here,
nice and shiny, sometimes it's painted or corroded
and you got to take a little bit of sandpaper and find it.
Sometimes you have galvanized steel.
It'll be grayish or dark black in color,
sometimes it has some red stains, a little bit of like
corrosion taking place.
If you live in a newer house or have had somebody
come in and replumb your house, you may see
this plastic pipe, another word for it is PEX tubing, okay?
And of course there's always lead.
We haven't found, and it's very unlikely to find,
leaded lines in a home, actual water lines,
but the service line coming up to the meter
could be lead.
Very easy to pinpoint if it's lead.
Go down, find your meter, and lead is dull,
it's a dull gray, it's very soft.
You can usually take your fingernail and
you can press into it.
The most important thing, if you want to know
if you have a lead line, there's this kind of a
bad photo but you see how this part of the liner here
kind of bulbs out?
It' looks like a snake swallowing a golf ball?
That's the kind of thing to look for
if you have a lead line.
Lead lines don't have any threads on them.
They're not soldered like a copper pipe.
They have what's known as a weld over top,
it's actually spread over to
connect it to the fitting, okay?
So when you go home today, go look.
Investigate your own home, look to see if you have
a lead line coming in the home.
If you do, get in contact with us, we'd like to know, okay?
And of course any home there are some times
when you're inspecting you'll find stuff like this.
You'll find a galvanized pipe like that
with a lot of rust and corrosion.
Sometimes you find this a lot on top of a water heater,
the lines coming out, that water's warm there
it's usually humid right there.
Sometimes these things will have leaks that develop.
These are the good times to investigate
and keep on track of these things.
That way you don't come home one day
and your basement's full of water cuz
one of these pipes let go.
As an operator I got to say this,
at a meter there's always going to be a valve.
It might be before the meter, might be after the meter,
might be on both sides.
As an operator, three o'clock in the morning
on a really cold January day, you'll get a call
that a resident has a broken line in their home.
It froze and it's leaking everywhere
and they can't shut the water off.
So I would jump in the truck, get to the water plant,
get my tools, go out to the resident's home
and we could stop all that water damage and leak
if we could only turn that valve.
But that valve hasn't been touched in so many years
it won't turn, it won't shut the water off.
Then I have to go out into the snow and dig down
and find the valve in the street and shut it off.
These valves, very important that you inspect them.
Every once in a while, turn them a little bit.
Okay the last thing you want to do is
get into an emergency in your home and the valve breaks
and now what are you going to do?
It might take the city a couple minutes to get there
to be able to shut it off at the street.
So these are very very important, just homeowner tips
to have so you can be in better control
of your plumbing and your water quality.
Then for the CORE program, so one thing back
to the program we talked about earlier, aerators.
The device at the end of your faucet, okay?
It's an energy conservation device.
It's supposed to make you think there's
more water coming out than there really is,
so you use less of it.
It's kind of like a waterfall but in a little
tiny device shape.
Material can get stuck in there, it can get
lodged in that screen.
So regularly take these aerators off, check them.
Remove that material if there is any.
If you can't get it out, put it in some white vinegar
for a little bit, that'll break it apart
and make it easier to clean.
Sometimes these get really rusty if they're
the really old style.
Replace it, that's just kind of different things to go by.
That's it, I hope we've provided some good information.
I hope everybody goes home today, stop by a water site,
get a kit, sample your water, call the
Call for CORE number.
We can come out and do a CORE visit and provide a bottle.
Sample your water, make it a game with your kids,
try to find the water meter.
Sometimes it's in the back corner underneath
a bunch of stuff, find it, make sure you can
get access to things like this.
That's kind of the whole deal.