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Clean your water cooler!

If you have a water cooler, it is important to clean it regularly. How often it should be done varies with recommendations from yearly, to every 6 months to Health Canada' recommendation of every time you change the bottle. Health Canada Bottled Water Page. 

How do you clean your cooler? These are the steps that we use:

1)     Unplug cord and allow the unit to come to room temperature. For Hot and Cold coolers, run some water out of the hot tap after unplugging to cool the water.

2)   Remove the bottle.  Empty the reservoir through the faucets. For Hot and Cold coolers, also remove the drain plug at the back of the cooler.  Replace after the hot tank is empty.

3)      Remove the lid of your dispenser.  No-Spill tops require a little extra effort to pull off and push on. Some have a locking pin. Some require a partial counter-clockwise turn before removing.

4)      Mix a cleaning solution by adding 1 tablespoon of household bleach to 1 gallon of fresh water. Thoroughly wipe inside of reservoir with cleaning solution and a clean cloth or paper towel.

5)      Fill reservoir with cleaning solution. For Hot and Cold coolers, open the hot faucet until water comes out and top up the reservoir with solution.

6)      Spray a diluted solution of bleach and water inside the faucet spouts.  Let stand for 5 minutes, and then drain through the faucets. For Hot and Cold coolers, also remove the drain plug at the back of the cooler.  Replace after the hot tank is empty.

7)      Fill the reservoir with fresh water. For Hot and Cold coolers, open the hot faucet until water comes out and top up the reservoir with fresh water.

8)      Drain through the faucets. For Hot and Cold coolers, also remove the drain plug at the back of the cooler.  Replace after the hot tank is empty.

9)      Repeat steps 7 & 8 once more.

10)  Remove the air filter from the top.

11)  Clean the top in a clean sink filled with fresh water and a mild bleach solution.

12)  Rinse the top with fresh water, and dry with clean paper towel.

13)  Replace air filter

14)  Replace cooler top.

15)  Replace bottle.

16)  Open faucets one at a time until water runs from each.

17)  Plug unit back in.

18) Water should be chilled and hot, if so equipped in about 1/2 hour.

Should you drink soft water?

One of the most common questions that we hear about water softeners is whether we should drink the water. It's a great question and one of the first things that I wanted to know when we started.

A water softeners purpose is to remove the hardness minerals from water. Hardness minerals cause:

• Bathtub ring and film on shower tiles
• Excess soap usage in bathing, laundry, dishes
• Laundry to wear out faster
• Scaling in your water appliances, reducing life
• And a lot of other problems that we have covered in an earlier post  

But really, if you think about it - this is really the "Working" water in your home. A Water Softener is designed to improve the working water in you home.


So now I better get to the question.


The way that a water softener works is called "ion exchange" but really that just means that it trades the hardness minerals for the sodium in your water. The amount of sodium that a water softener will add to your water depends on the hardness, but normally here it works out to about 80 milligrams of sodium in a liter of water. A single slice of bread is 125 - 150 milligrams. 

So really, if you are not on a sodium restricted diet, the answer is normally yes. Here's some information from the Mayo Clinic.


What can you do if you have a water softener and don't want to dringk the water?

1. If the plumbing lines are accessible, you can bypass a tap for your drinking water
2. You can use potassium chloride to recharge your water softener. A couple of brands are Nature's Own or Softtouch. This product is about 5 times the price of salt, but then you will be getting potassium instead of sodium.
3. You can drink bottled water.
4. Many people are deciding that they want better drinking water. Reverse osmosis systems can provide the best drinking water and remove the sodium.