The UV Revolution: How UV Filtration Transforms Your Water Quality

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

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Mountain View Pure Podcast,
where your journey toexceptional water quality begins
.
Here's your host, dan Toth,owner of Mountain View Pure
Water.
They proudly serve homeownersin the Tri-Cities and beyond,
offering advanced water and airpurification solutions that
support a healthier lifestyle.
The mission is clear helpingyou get great water.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
When it comes to water purification, uv
filtration is a game changer,eliminating harmful
microorganisms without the needfor chemicals.
Welcome back everyone.
Skip Monty, co-host slashproducer, back in the studio
with Dan Toth, owner of MountainView Pure Water.
Dan, how's it going?
Doing excellent, skip.
How are you today?
I'm doing excellent as well.

(00:55):
It's a beautiful day outsideand no rain.
I'm good, I'm good.
So, dan, I'm pretty excited toget into the conversation today.
Water quality is something thatmost of us take for granted,
but UV filtration is afascinating technology that
makes a real difference, solet's just dive in.
How does UV filtration helpimprove water quality?

Speaker 3 (01:17):
I think maybe the first thing to talk about is
what are we talking about whenwe talk about a filter?
Ultraviolet is a sterilizationtechnique that we're going to
use two words interchangeablysterilization and disinfection.
Okay, so maybe there'ssomething living in the water
that could be harmful to a human.
What we want to do is we wantto remove that.
We want to disinfect the water.

(01:39):
If the water is currentlyinfected with something that can
be harmful, we want todisinfect it.
The other concept issterilizing.
Well, what is sterilization?
It is the removal of theability to reproduce.
Okay, to sterilize it.
What ultraviolet sterilizationdoes or ultraviolet disinfection
, same term is it passes waterby a light.

(02:02):
So imagine this is a light bulbinside of a container and the
water passes by that light bulband it's a correct frequency to
disrupt the DNA of the livingorganisms that could be in there
, infecting the water.
So as the water passes through,there's enough energy in that

(02:22):
light, the right frequency andenough time as water passes by,
for anything that's living inthat water to have their DNA
disrupted.
Even if they're not livingthings like viruses, it disrupts
the DNA so they're no longerable to do what they do, making
people sick.
This works for bacteria, virusand even things like cysts,

(02:45):
cryptosporidium and giardia andanything that could be present
in water waterborne illness.
Ultraviolet sterilization candeactivate or eliminate that
risk.
So that's the first concept.
When we talk about filtering,we're usually thinking about
filtering something out.
But ultraviolet sterilizationdoesn't really filter anything
out.
It changes the ability ofsomething to be living and

(03:10):
active and a contaminant thatwould harm us to being
inactivated or eliminated fromthe ability to harm us.
So filtering is not really whatit's doing.
The water is passing through it, but it's actually causing a
change in the water, not thechemistry of the water.
It still remains water.
It doesn't remove or add anysort of chemical to the water,

(03:35):
unlike chlorination.
If you chlorinate the water, itcan also disinfect or sterilize
the water, but it can't do thatwithout affecting the water
chemistry itself.
So you'll have byproducts ofchlorination, you'll have
chemicals and leftover leftoversof the the chlorination process

(03:56):
.
So we see this when we look inat the city water.
I love to tell people about theEWG, which is the environmental
working group.
I always tell everyone I talkto tell people about the EWG,
which is the EnvironmentalWorking Group.
I always tell everyone I talkto about the Environmental
Working Group.
You can go on their website,just type in into a new browser,
ewg, and you'll have optionscome up.
And we want to look at the tapwater database.

(04:16):
The tap water database willallow you to see what
particularly is in the water ofthe municipal water supply that
you get your water from.
In fact, what they've done atthe Environmental Working Group
is they've collected annualwater quality reports from
virtually every water treatmentutility in the country and they

(04:38):
have posted those on theirwebsite.
So you can just look it up byyour zip code and then choose
the utility that you get waterprovided to you from, and then
you can see what the currenthealth guidelines are assessing
your water quality report fromyour municipal water supply.
So it's a really neat, a reallyneat thing.

(04:58):
So most of the city water inthe country is sanitized by
either chlorine, chloramines,bromide.
A few places use ozone, a fewplaces use ultraviolet, but the
majority are the chlorinebromine and that leaves a
chemical we'll say waste product, a leftover in the water.

(05:22):
Waste product, the leftover inthe water, and so ultraviolet
can do something similar to makethe water safe without any
leftover.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Disinfectant byproducts Wow, well, with
chlorine, and I was going to askthat how does it compare to
chlorine?
Is water that's beenchlorinated dangerous, or just
talk about that?

Speaker 3 (05:45):
So according to the US government, it's not
dangerous, but of course wedon't have the best track record
for keeping people safe.
So the EPA hasn't raised,hasn't changed, upgraded,
improved drinking waterstandards in almost 20 years.
And that's kind of a scarythought, because we now know a

(06:07):
whole lot more about what can beand is wrong with our drinking
water, what they call potablewater.
This is water that they say youcan drink.
This is safe water, and thereality is it is safe, for today
in most situations.
That brings us back to exactlywhat an ultraviolet system does.
We don't want anything in ourwater that can harm us, that can
be a threat to us biologically,that can cause us discomfort,

(06:31):
upset, stomach, irritable, youknow, bowel issues.
Maybe we think of malaria,dysentery, different things in
the past that people basicallyhad diarrhea until they died.
We don't want something likethat coming into our cup of
water that we're drinking, andso that's why all the water is

(06:52):
sanitized in some way.
In this country, all the publicwater supply is sanitized, and
that's what they use Chlorine.
Now the majority are usingbromine to do that, and so there
are leftover byproducts, and Ithink of it kind of this way, if
you were to mop your floor.
Let's imagine you like pinesalt and you mop your floor with

(07:13):
pine salt and when you got doneyou took that mop water, poured
it through a coffee filter andthen set it on the table to
drink it.
Nobody would do that.
But at the same time they'renot necessarily removing those
sanitization byproducts from thewater before they send it to us
.
It looks nice and clean, itsmells like a pool, but it has a

(07:34):
lot of stuff in it that you maynot want to be drinking.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Wow, forever diarrhea .

Speaker 3 (07:43):
Only until you die.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Only until you die.
That's right.
Wow, yet a great reason to geta filtration system with UV.
You mentioned that the water'spassing by this bulb.
How often does that bulb haveto be replaced to maintain its
effectiveness?

Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, in water treatment bulbs usually have a
9,000 hour life.
Some of them are up to 11.
What that means is the bulbwill stay lit.
If you don't understand whatthe lifespan is, the bulb will
stay lit.
You could have a bulb that'sfive years old and it still
looks like it's working.
But the lifespan on it has todo with the frequency it's

(08:22):
producing as it burns.
And so after about 9,000 hoursof continuous prevention,
sanitization because the lightdoesn't ever shut off that light
will degrade to the point wherethe frequency isn't the right
frequency to kill anymore.
It's not the right frequency tosterilize, and at that point
you're getting a much, muchreduced sterilization rate and

(08:47):
eventually it won't work anymore.
It won't be providing you anysterilization.
So one of the one of the thingsthat people do misunderstand is
that just because they have alight that seems to be working
you know we are used to walkinginto a room if the lights turn
on when we flip that switchthat's the expected and desired

(09:08):
outcome.
That's not the same thing withultraviolet sterilization the
light may be lit but you're notgetting the desired outcome,
which is a sterilization.
So it's important that thoselights get changed every 11 or
12 months.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
Is there like a tracking system or something
that, or you just where you know, at a certain point kind of
like a refrigerator, waterfilter or light comes on and
says it's time to change?
Does that happen with the UVsystem?

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Well, that's a funny, funny thing that you just
brought up, because there aremany refrigerator products out
there, different companies andmanufacturers that actually have
the switch to turn on thatlight, to change your filter,
not have anything to do with thewater usage.
It might be linked to how manytimes you open the door, and so

(09:57):
if you have kids, like I do,that could be happening pretty
often.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
Yeah, wow, wow, did not know that yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
So it's really not arbitrary.
You need to change out thatlight once a year, whether you,
whether you think it's stillworking or not, because the
frequency changes as the lightburns.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
So at least once a year.

Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
At least Wow.
Well, can can purification beused along with other filtration
methods to make it even moreeffective?

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Yes, actually we run into this a lot.
On well water, often someonewill call for a well water test
on a new house that they'rebuying or maybe there is a USDA
or a VA loan.
If they have well water, it hasto be tested to be safe from
bacteria before that loan can gothrough.
In fact, I would say one of thebiggest problems that I see

(10:52):
when I look at how real estateis conducted is, unless it's a
USDA or VA loan, they largelythe realtors, the mortgage
lenders, the home purchaserslargely neglect to test the well
to see if it's safe becauseit's not mandated for the loan,
and so that's something that Iwould encourage anyone who's

(11:14):
listening to this.
If you're buying a home thathas well water, you need to have
that tested or you could besubjecting yourself to something
that can harm you or yourfamily.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Does UV filtration work better in well water or
municipal water supplies, ordoes it matter?

Speaker 3 (11:31):
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

(11:51):
contaminants.
Chlorine doesn't have that.
You can have things like cysts,like Cryptosporidium and
Giardia grow in chlorinatedwater lines and still kind of
come in and invade your home andmaybe you can drink that and
have some intestinal issues orstomach issues from that.
That's on city chlorinated orbrominated water.
That sort of thing can stillhappen With well water.

(12:12):
Typically our biggest issues areis there sediment in the water?
Because the UV light is onlyeffective if it's actually in
direct contact with the, if itcan directly shine on the
bacteria or virus or whatever'sin the water.
And so if you have a particlelarger than five microns, the

(12:34):
bacteria can actually hidebehind that particle from the UV
light and can enter inundestroyed, so in full working
order.
And so we always put a filterin front of the ultraviolet
system.
That's a five micron filter, tomake sure that nothing can hide
behind particulate to escapethe uv sterilization.
So that's one thing.

(12:55):
The second issue is if thewater is very hard seven grains
of hardness or more the thewater needs to be softened
because otherwise you'd have atremendous buildup.
You know, if you have hard waterat home, you have a white
crusty buildup in differentplaces.
If you have iron, you can havea staining or an iron orangish,

(13:18):
reddish buildup different places.
Manganese can be a blackbuildup and accumulation, and so
those sorts of things need tobe removed or they will coat the
quartz sleeve that the bulbfits down in between.
It separates the bulb from thewater and it's called a quartz
sleeve and it's clear.

(13:38):
It can coat that quartz sleeveand make the bulb useless.
It can't shine on the wateranymore.
So you have to remove anyminerals or contaminants that
could cover up that quartzsleeve, rendering the
ultraviolet system useless.
So softening water that isseven grains or harder is a

(13:59):
necessity.
Removing iron is a necessity.
So those are the sorts ofthings that we have to use
filtration equipment before theultraviolet system in well water
.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Wow, this has been a very eye-opening discussion.
I still can't get over thediarrhea until you die.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
That's not necessarily nowadays, but I mean
, you take a look back inhistory and it doesn't matter
what age you find diseases.
Diarrhea is often the waypeople died because we didn't
have a way to fix that.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Right.
Well, hopefully we can avoid itwith a UV filtration system now
A powerful tool for cleaningand safe water, and I know I
appreciate, and I'm sure yourlisteners appreciate, these
insights as well.
Dan, thanks so much and we'llcatch you in the next episode.
Sounds good, thanks, skip.
All right, thanks, man.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Thank you for joining us on the Mountain View Pure
podcast.
When you're ready to transformyour home's water and air
quality, call or text423-218-9361 for a free in-home
consultation.
For more information visitmvpwaternet.
Remember, great water is thefoundation of a great life.