Three of My Water-Testing Pet Peeves

Over the years, I’ve noticed some bad habits that many water treaters have fallen into…habits that jeopardize their test results and then lead to improper chemical treatment. When customers trust us with their systems, it’s important we maintain that trust. To help us in that area, I thought I would shed some light on a few of the areas where we just might be falling short.

First on my list of pet peeves is seeing reps collect a water sample without first rinsing out their sample bottle. Who knows what ugly stuff was left over in that bottle from before. Customers pay good money to have their systems taken care of, and it all starts with a proper water sample.

Another concern of mine is seeing reps ignore wait times when performing tests. I once watched someone testing a water sample using a colorimeter, and I was surprised when he totally disregarded the wait times in the instructions and didn’t use a timer. He thought he knew “in his head” when the sample needed to be read. Needless to say, his results were all over the place.

My final pet peeve is reps who just check the analyzer readings on a service visit but fail to realize the importance of verifying and calibrating the instrument on a regular basis. Trusting analyzers are accurate for months at a time is looking for trouble. I saw some inexperienced reps doing this, but maybe that’s a result of their training. If they had been taught how paramount calibrations are, then chances are they would be doing this task more often. Cross-checking an analyzer does not take much time and is worth the investment. Otherwise, you’ll have to spend a lot of your time selling new accounts to make up for the ones you lose.