Crawl Spaces & Confined Spaces in Oconto
Challenge
A lot of waterfront property can have a lot of challenges that come with water treatment. Lot sizes tend to be smaller, and the houses on those lots use all the space they possibly can. This particular home had a crawl space, not tall enough for a hot water heater or any other home equipment. Just enough room for a well pressure tank, the plumbing, and the HVAC. The project coordinator and homeowner then have to brainstorm on where in the home is best to put their water treatment equipment. To add to the challenge the water had to much iron and odor for a softener or conditioner to handle on their own. For good, usable, working grade water we needed to add an iron filter to a softener and still have room for the brine tank. The first option was to install in the garage, there was a space that seemed quite unusable for the homeowner; however, the garage wasn’t heated, and the project coordinator was worried about freezing.
Solution
Just above where the pressure tank was in the crawl space was the laundry closet. A counter could be moved from the closet to make a 2.5ftx3ft floor space, 3 3/4in holes had to be drilled in the floor behind the equipment, one for the water intake, another for the outgoing and a final for the drain line. Both the softener and iron filter were pushed against the wall as far as possible, and the brine tank was placed and filled directly in front of the two tanks. This solution does come with its own challenges. Iron filters can be noisy and having it on the main floor not far from the main bedroom is not the most ideal, but they closet door still closes properly and they don’t have to crawl into a crawl space of venture out to the garage to fill salt or investigate if there ever was a problem. Now they have odor free, iron free, soft water to use in their home.
