Please Explain This Demonstration By A Filter Company

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A girl came to my house today, and gave me a demonstration on water quality. Her demonstration was pretty convincing, but I still can't be sold on anything until I do my own poking around first.

She produced three glasses and began filling them with water from different sources. One glass was filled with water she had brought (which was apparently water filtered by her company), the second with water from a generic brand of bottling company, and the other filled with our current tap water.

She then used a "ppm meter", and placed it in all three glasses, seperately. Our tap watered registered around 130ppm. The bottled watered registered 800+ppm, and their filtered water registered around 10-15ppm. She explained the reason their water even rigistered any ppm reading was due to the fact that their filters completely cleans the water to 0ppm, and then adds vital/healthy nutrients to the water supply.

THEN, she pulls out a device with four prongs, that plugged into the wall (two prongs on one side, and two prongs on the other). She took two glasses, side by side, and placed two prongs in each glass (as a comparison). Their water bubbled very little, while our tap water bubbled a considerable amount more. After about 30 seconds, their glass of water stayed unchanged while the glass of our tap water went from yellow, to dark brown with a thick, green, foamy film at the top.

She explained that this deviced was removing the chlorine from the water, and leaving us with the water in the state it was in before chlorine was added. In essence, she was trying to convey that the water, in bottle of water, starts off looking like disgusting swamp water, chlorine is added, and it ends up looking clear and drinkable.

Now, I can't remember precisely what she said, but I think the device she put into the glasses of water consisted of an aluminum rod and an iron rod. Either way, when she left, I was left wondering:

What is this process called? Why did it make my water disgusting? Would it still be drinkable? Was it even possible for this device to remove chlorine?

Does anyone have any insight or thoughs about this demonstration? I'm very, very curious about what was exactly happening here.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you all for your time.

[Gary Slusser]

It is an unethical type demo and you need to stay away for her and the equipment she sells.

She can not reconstitute water that has been chlorinated. What you saw was a reaction between the two rods in the higher TDS chlorinated water.

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Okay, I did a fair bit of research. It was slow-going at the beginning, but once I found the actual names of the items used in this demonstration, I was able to find more than enough evidence to show I was being very mislead. I will leave a rough explination of the facts I found about this demonstration.

1. TDS Meter: TDS stands for "Total Dissolved Solids". There were a few explinations on the Internet that actually says TDS stands for "Total Dissolved Salts", but the majority say "Solids". Either way, this device tests the electrical charge of water. The higher the content of dissolved materials in your water, the stronger the charge between the two electrodes in this meter. The device converts the charge to a parts per million (ppm) figure, which is proportioned to the amount of dissolved solids in the glass.

- Basically, the woman was showing us that their water couldn't carry an electrical charge because no dissolved (or at least very little) solids we present. H20, in itself, is a very poor conductor of electricity. This is important to remember when explaining the next part of her scam.

2. Precipitator: The device used to "remove the chlorine from our water, to turn it back into it's original state" was nothing more than another type of TDS meter. It's iron rod is used to facilitate the production of iron oxide when a charge is present. The stronger the electrical charge, the more iron oxide (rust) is produced in the water. The amount of rust produced is also proportionate to the amount of dissolved solids in the water.

- Basically, the woman was telling us our water began very dirty before any chlorine was added, when, in fact, her machine was creating rust in our glasses of water, proportional to the TDS. Because her fiiltered water had not electrical charge, no rust was created. However, if I were to add simple table salt to her perfectly filtered water, large amounts of rust would be created as well, since salt helps conduct electricity when dissolved in water. I could have made her water look the most disgusting of all the water she had been using to demonstrate with. It's NOT because her water originated from a swamp, contained chlorine, or anything like that.

3. Reverse Osmosis: You can search reverse osmosis yourself, but this is the type of filter she was trying to sell. There are many articles online stating the benifit/harm of reverse osmosis. In my opinion, she should not have been trying to sell a reverse osmosis system to a home supplied by water already filtered by the municipality. Reverse osmosis was created to remove salt from sea water, allowing undrinkable water to be consumed. It also seem that is has horticultural benifits when feeding plants, to strip the water of as much as you can before dissolving any chemicals or feed in to the water for more calculated results. As for human consumption as a whole, it seems very unnecessary for any modern city home water source. If anything, I have read of negative effect from reverse osmosis alone, including harmful elements and compounds to still be able to pass through it's membrane, a chance of turning the water slightly acidic, and being very inefficient as it uses about 3 gallons of water for every 1 gallon of water it filters for use.

- Basically, the woman was just trying to make money, no matter how much lying or harm she may have had to cause to her "customers".



Anyway, I just wanted to wrap that up after finding the information myself. If anyone has any comments, feel free to post, but, I will probably not be coming back to these forums, as I was only using them to educate myself. I, now, feel pretty confident in my decision to not buy her filtering solution, and more knowledgable about the devices and methods she was using.

Feel free to keep this thread alive for anyone curious about this situation. After all, I feel I'm a pretty bright fellow, and even I was almost duped by such a presentation. I mean, I could tell something was fishy, but had I been just a little more convinced, I could see even myself buying her product. ...and I know a lot more people out there that are a lot more oblivious to scams, or even unwilling to search for truths themselves.

Thanks for your time!

[Gary Slusser]

The TDS (total dissolved solids, not salts) is a measurement of the water's ability to conduct electrical current. It is a very valid test and nothing about it is a scam.

The things dissolved in water allow it to conduct electrical current, remove them and the water conducts less current, it is measured with a TDS meter that converts the reading to ppm of TDS.

ROs produce high quality drinking and cooking water. Comparable and usually better quality than distilled water without the inefficiency and much higher expense. It is not a scam and the reject water should not be considered wasted anymore than the water you use to shower with, wash a vehicle or veggies or grow grass etc. etc. etc..

RO water is not acidic, it is aggressive to metals due to the DO and CO2 content. You test an RO's operation buy using a TDS meter to see the reduction of TDS between the raw water and the RO's product water. It usually is 90+ reduction when the membrane is new and the percentage spread slowly decreases as the membrane ages and when the TDS reaches a set point, you know to replace the membrane. No scam there. IIRC, RO was invented for the space shuttle.

The unethical, scam if you will but shouldn't, is the precipitation demo. And she may not know that because of her training; or lack thereof.