I would definitely recommend American Water Conditioning for the servicing of water softeners.
The office staff was very helpful and my technician was friendly, knowledgeable and HONEST.
I bought a house that came with a very old looking water softener system and I had never owned one before. The previous owner said it could probably use a cleaning and need to have salt added about once a month.
For about 6 weeks all seemed to be fine until I tried tinkering with the system to see if I could figure out how it worked. I turned valves and dials and pushed buttons, etc.
Long story short I came out the garage a few hours after tinkering with it and found the floor flooded with water from the system.
I immediately started Google searching for any information I could on the system. All I could find was a spec sheet that was 15+ years old. I called the manufacturer and couldn't get anyone to talk to.
Turns out my system was no longer made and the original manufacturer was taken over by Kinetico. So I again turned to Google and came across American Water and was happy to find out they were located less than 5 miles from my house.
I called to see if I could get an appointment for a check-up and to see if someone could simply teach me how to use the system. Turns out they already had my system in their records and stated that it had not been serviced in over ten years. I was a little reluctant to schedule an appointment, as i assumed they would try to sell me a new system and I was definitely not in the market for one. I went ahead and scheduled a tech. the appointment was within one week.
Here is where I became pleased with American Water.
The tech (I wish I remembered his name) showed up on time and was very friendly. After some small talk he began to look over the system, which he did mention quite quickly, was very old and outdated. "Here we go" is all I could think.
He looked everything over, ran and flushed the system for a few cycles, checked water quality and even checked the house water pressure with system both on and off. Being a contractor and a hands on guy myself, I was kind of hovering over him and playing close attention to what he was doing. When he finished he sat down to tell me what he found. "Here we go" was still running through my head.
Instead of a sales pitch, he told me that, much to his surprise, everything seemed to be ok. He stated that the system was approximately 20 years old, uses outdated technology and probably won't last too many years longer, but as of that day, all was well. He did recommend that the carbon filler in the filter tank be replaced since he had no idea of it's age and that the life cycle was most likely over. He also recommended cleaning the salt tank and replacing all the pellets.
I asked him why it leaked all over the garage (an answer I already knew) and he stated that the overflow valve switch didn't open and the water that should have drained out to the sewer line leaked out the top of the tank. He had checked the valve operation a few times and it appeared to be working just fine.
He then spent about 15 minutes explaining the system controls and settings to me. He was very thorough and made sure I understood what was going on.
Knowing that I had only booked a one hour appointment I figured I was going to have to schedule another appointment for the additional work. When I asked the tech, he did state that he had full day scheduled but would be happy to do the carbon replacement. He gave me a price, I agreed and he got right to it. While he was working on that I asked him about cleaning out the storage tank and he explained it very well. As he was finishing the carbon replacement, knowing he could clean the tank in a tenth of the time I could, I asked if he could do it for me. He said "no problem", gave me a price and got to work on that also. Since I live a mile from the store i ran up and bought new salt pellets so the system would be ready before he left.
All in all the tech spent about two hours at my house. He was extremely knowledgeable and friendly. I know had a "like-new" water softener and knew how to use it.
I recommended them to all my neighbors for future servicing. I have since moved to a new house and don't know if i am going to install a new system. If i do, I will definitely call American Water.
As a contractor for over 20 years myself, it's was nice to deal with an honest company like American Water. read more