498 Industrial Water Week 2026: Pretreatment Monday

Industrial Water Week is here—and Day 1 is Pretreatment Monday. In Episode 498, Trace Blackmore, CWT, opens the 2026 celebration with troubleshooting stories, returning guest greetings, and a new Detective H2O case that brings pretreatment performance into focus.

Celebrate with purpose

Take a photo with your favorite pretreatment equipment—a softener, RO, or filter housing—and post it with #IWW26. Then search the hashtag to connect with others doing the same work. Trace's invitation makes the week visible and recognizes the people who keep downstream systems operating.

Start with the pretreatment train

At a food processing plant, rising RO product-water conductivity had already prompted a membrane replacement. Trace found the cause in the softener: channeling allowed hardness to pass through and scale the RO. Rebedding and reprogramming the softener resolved the problem without further work on the RO.

You'll also hear greetings from Conor Parrish of Fact Water Co, Ron Blutrich, and Dr. Kelle Zeiher. Their stories cover proper isolation before opening resin bottles, UV pretreatment and microbiological risk, and unexpected newspaper debris inside an RO—three reminders to keep questioning assumptions.

Follow the evidence with Detective H2O

James McDonald returns with The Case of Something Fading Fast, investigating boiler alkalinity that will not hold. A softener may test soft just after regeneration yet leak hardness later in its service run. The case connects that missed leakage with treatment consumption and falling alkalinity.

Detective H2O proposes an end-of-run grab sample or a 24-hour screening composite, supported by logs of the active tank, makeup demand, production load, and alkalinity timing. The composite helps screen performance across the service cycle; it does not replace targeted grab samples.

Follow along on LinkedIn to guess the mystery guest voices. Trace reveals them on Careers Friday, October 9. With Boiler Tuesday, Cooling Wednesday, and Wastewater Thursday still ahead, there are more opportunities to celebrate the work you do.

Listen to the full conversation above. Explore related episodes below. Stay engaged, keep learning, and continue scaling up your knowledge!