3 Things To Consider When Building A New Home Or Renovating

There are quite a few building projects going on right now in Huron County.

The tornado of 2011 hit Goderich (at the end of Highway 8 past Seaforth & Clinton) right at its heart and left a trail of destruction in its path. Some home owners were fortunate enough to receive insurance settlements quickly and started to rebuild just a few months later. For quite a few though, it’s taken a long time to settle everything and building projects are just getting started.

Down the road in Mitchell, another building boom is under way. An entire new subdivision is being built adjacent to the golf course in the northwest corner of town. Mitchell has long been known as a great place to live and is adding to their population each and every year.

IF YOU’RE BUILDING A NEW HOME OR RENOVATING YOUR EXISTING HOME, THERE ARE A FEW THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND:

1. Consider if you would like to have a drinking system installed. It’s nice to have the space under your kitchen sink available to store your cleaners, dishwasher detergent and maybe a bag of potatoes. If the basement of your home is going to be completely finished with a drywalled ceiling, the only option (if you decide after everything is done) is to have the reverse osmosis system installed in that space under the sink. If you’re planning on having a separate faucet with purified water, a great idea is to have the tubing run through the walls and down into a laundry room or utility area during construction. Then, once the walls are all finished, the drinking system can be installed downstairs and out of the way.

2. Think about chlorine removal for the entire house. A lot of people get dry skin from showering in chlorinated water. The chlorine has done its job killing any bacteria that might have been in the water supply, but now that it’s in your home – it’s time to get it out. A backwashable carbon filter is designed to filter all the water that enters your house and clean itself every few days. Once the chlorine residual is gone, so is its nasty odour and taste. In preparing for this system, consider having a floor drain installed in the utility room so there’s a place to drain the wastewater. Another option for chlorine removal is a special attachment that can go inside certain models of water softeners – which leads us into the third point.

3. A water softener removes hardness (which is calcium). It does this by passing the water through a resin bed and exchanging the calcium ion for a sodium ion. However, this process will not remove chlorine. There is an optional attachment that is available for some softener makes & models which can be installed inside the mineral tank underneath the control valve. With this setup, you get a triple benefit – perfectly soft water, no chlorine taste or smell, and a single system to treat all your ‘working’ water. As mentioned with the backwashable carbon filter, if you’re thinking about having a water softener installed, plan in advance and have an appropriate drain plumbed in.

There’s a lot to think about when the construction is going on – we know that. But taking a few minutes now to plan for your water treatment needs will make your decisions easier when the time comes.