Drinkable - the water podcast

About Drinkable - the water podcast

Most people turn on a tap and never think about where it came from, the treatment system that removed what shouldn't be there, the professional who designed and installed it, the regulation that set the standard, or the two billion people worldwide who turn on a tap and get something they cannot safely drink. That gap...between what most people assume and what is actually true about water...is why Drinkable exists. gregreyneke.substack.com (https://gregreyneke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Drinkable, the water podcast

Category

health & fitness · science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

15 Jun 2026

Latest episode

8 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

5 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   8 Sept 2026

   Sequestro - novel PFAS capture

   In addition to membrane separations, potable water PFAS treatment in this country runs primarily on two technologies: granular activated carbon and PFAS-selective ion exchange resin. There is no low-cost, readily available alternative sitting between them, which is exactly the gap Juergen Koller is trying to fill at Sequestro (https://www.sequestro.co/), and it is the subject of this week’s episode of Drinkable. Koller spent about fifteen years in traditional chemical manufacturing before he started Sequestro. He is a trained synthetic inorganic chemist who specialized in process and plant-level projects. That manufacturing background and domain-competence underpins how he talks about his own technology. Most founders in this space lead with sales-stories about the chemistry in ideal conditions. Koller leads with the question of whether the chemistry can survive contact with scaling and whether he will be able to truly deliver what their benchtop testing suggests. This is something we see far too many Cleantech founders either ignore or get horribly wrong. Founded on textile chemistry, rebuilt from wood Sequestro’s origin runs through the University of Michigan (https://innovationpartnerships.umich.edu/stories/sequestro-celebrates-launch-as-u-m-startup-with-bell-ringing-ceremony/), though not in the way people usually picture a university spinout. Koller was not a student, postdoc, or faculty member there. He lived nearby, walked into the school’s innovation partnerships office, and asked whether the licensing portfolio had a technology that fit a chemist with his background. That conversation led him to Anne McNeil, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Chemistry at Michigan, whose lab had been developing cellulose modification chemistry originally aimed at cleaning dye contaminants like methylene blue out of textile wastewater. McNeil is Sequestro’s co-founder and Scientific Advisor, and the company licenses the underlying technology directly from her research program. Koller looked at that chemistry and asked a manufacturing question rather than a scientific one: could the same functional groups be built directly onto a wood-based residual material, skipping the processed cellulose step entirely and going straight from raw sawdust to a finished adsorbent. The first working batch came from sawdust his own table saw produced while he was building a dog bed for a new puppy. Sequestro’s ArborSORB media took shape from there, built on intellectual property that the university has patented. The underlying chemistry The published science behind ArborSORB describes what the McNeil lab calls quaternized wood pulp; cellulose fiber grafted with cationic quaternary ammonium groups. Functionally, that makes it behave similarly to an ion exchange resin: a carrier material with functional groups on its surface that grab PFAS molecules electrostatically and hold them. The carrier is what’s interesting here…a conventional PFAS-selective resin uses a polystyrene bead. ArborSORB uses a wood particle instead, which changes both the raw material cost and the potential environmental footprint of the finished product. The 2022 paper describing this chemistry, published by Koller’s co-founder and her research group, found that quaternized wood pulp removed more than 80 percent of PFOS and PFOA within seconds at environmentally relevant concentrations around 2.5 micrograms per liter, with maximum adsorption capacities of 763 milligrams per gram for PFOS and 605 milligrams per gram for PFOA, figures competitive with both conventional and newer PFAS adsorbents. The 2022 study found the material was notably less efficient at capturing shorter-chain PFAS (Technology Readiness Level 4 Sequestro describes its own progress as moving from Technology Readiness Level 4 toward active field pilot coordination. TRL 4, on the standard nine-level scale used across government and industry to describe how mature a technology is, means the material has been validated as a component in a laboratory environment, a meaningfully earlier stage than field-validated or commercially proven. That is a more precise way to describe where things stand than “pilot-scale” or “pre-commercial,” and it is worth keeping in mind against any comparison table that positions ArborSORB as already matching resin performance at carbon pricing. Those are targets the company is building toward, not independently confirmed outcomes. The federal PFAS drinking water rule sets a maximum contaminant level of four parts per trillion (ppt) for PFOA and PFOS, a limit that pushes water testing and treatment into territory most people have no intuition for. One part per trillion is roughly a drop of food coloring diluted across five Olympic-sized swimming pools. Reliably testing for and treating PFAS compounds in drinking water is a real analytical and engineering achievement, and it asks something of small municipalities that many of them are not equipped to deliver: the testing infrastructure, the treatment technologies, and the funding to install and operate it all have to show up together, and right now they frequently do not. That gap between a federal standard and a local municipality’s actual capacity is one reason the case for decentralized treatment keeps getting stronger. Municipal systems can realistically aim to make water broadly safe at the city level, and Point of Entry (POE) or Point of Use (POU) treatment address the specific concern/s that matters most, which for most PFAS exposure is oral consumption rather than every gallon that leaves the tap. No single technology is going to solve PFAS everywhere at every scale. The honest answer, and the one Koller gives when asked why his technology can compete against established competitors, is that the scale of the contamination problem needs multiple approaches working at once, not a single winner. The credential still matters, regardless of the media Whichever adsorbent ends up in a given filter vessel or cartridge housing, the decision about what technology fits a specific water chemistry, a specific regulatory requirement, and a specific budget still belongs with a trained professional. A WQA (https://wqa.org) Certified Water Specialist or Master Water Specialist is trained to evaluate the entire scope of the project, rather than just reaching for whatever product is easiest to sell. The full conversation with Juergen Koller, including the story behind his first employee, the parts of being a CEO he finds harder than the chemistry, and his advice to his own younger self, is available now on Drinkable, wherever you get your podcasts, and on YouTube (https://youtu.be/NPYL6ap4SfA). What a great time to be in the water business! Sources and further reading Harris, J. T., de la Garza, G. D., Devlin, A. M., and McNeil, A. J. (2022). Rapid Removal of Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances with Quaternized Wood Pulp (https://pubs.acs.org/aewcaa/article-abstract/2/2/349/380974/Rapid-Removal-of-Poly-and-Perfluoroalkyl?redirectedFrom=fulltext). ACS ES&T Water 2(2):349-356. DOI: 10.1021/acsestwater.1c00396. McNeil, A. J. et al. Ionic-Functionalized Wood Pulp and Related Methods for Water Treatment. U.S. Patent Application Publication US 2022/0370982 A1, priority date May 21, 2021. Ann Arbor SPARK (2026). Ann Arbor SPARK Invests $150,000 in Sequestro to Advance PFAS Water Treatment Technology (https://annarborusa.org/news/ann-arbor-spark-invests-150000-in-sequestro-to-advance-pfas-water-treatment-technology/). annarborusa.org. Sequestro, Inc. ArborSORB Technical Specifications and Performance Advantages (https://www.sequestro.co/#How-It-Works). sequestro.co. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gregreyneke.substack.com (https://gregreyneke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   17 Aug 2026

   Your softener is not killing your water heater

   Walk into almost any plumbing supply house in the country and you will hear some version of this: “soft water kills water heaters (https://gregreyneke.substack.com/p/are-you-over-softening-your-water)”. It gets repeated at kitchen tables, in online forums, and occasionally even in the trade press. The problem is that it is a significant oversimplification of a real electrochemical phenomenon, and oversimplifications lead to bad treatment decisions. Silly phrases like “You’re over-softening the water (https://gregreyneke.substack.com/p/are-you-over-softening-your-water)” get used, but they are also not fact-based. The most common driver of accelerated anode consumption is elevated electrical conductivity in the water, not the mere presence of sodium ions (or the absence of Calcium). I have been solving corrosion problems for three decades, from residential systems in Utah to mission-critical industrial and institutional systems on multiple continents. The corrosion-mechanism is not mysterious once you understand what is happening at the electrode interface inside your water heater. Once understood, the path to a permanent, low-maintenance solution becomes rather obvious. How a sacrificial anode works Modern steel water heater tanks are lined with a glass (porcelain enamel) coating, but microscopic defects, weld seams, and fitting penetrations inevitably expose bare steel to the water column. In the presence of water carrying dissolved ions (electrolytes), those exposed steel surfaces form galvanic cells: anodic sites where metal oxidizes and releases electrons, and cathodic sites where those electrons are consumed in reduction reactions. Without intervention, the tank will eventually corrode from the inside…this is natural and normal. A sacrificial anode rod addresses this by using a metal that sits higher in the galvanic series than steel: magnesium, aluminum, or an aluminum-zinc alloy. The anode material is electrochemically more active, so it oxidizes first (preferentially), releasing electrons that suppress corrosion at the steel surfaces. The rod sacrifices itself so the tank does not have to. The rate at which that sacrifice occurs depends on three primary variables: temperature, the electrochemical potential difference between the anode and the tank steel, and the electrical conductivity of the water acting as the electrolyte. That last variable is the one most relevant to the softener conversation. What ion exchange does to your water chemistry Ion exchange softening is a substitution reaction. The cation resin preferentially strips divalent calcium (Ca²⁺) and magnesium (Mg²⁺) ions from the water and releases sodium (Na⁺) ions in their place. Every divalent hardness ion removed is replaced by two monovalent sodium ions to maintain electrical neutrality. That increased ion count drives measurable changes in water conductivity after softening. A cation exchanger targets only positively charged ions and has no affinity for anions, so anions like carbonate, chloride and sulfate that are present in the source water pass through the softener unreacted. Those anions remain in the softened water at essentially the same concentrations as in the feed water. Softening does not add chloride or any other anion to the product water. Physical total dissolved solids (measurable with a dry-down test), do not change dramatically and the mass balance is roughly equivalent because two sodium ions weigh roughly the same as one calcium or magnesium ion at comparable concentration. The conductivity increase after softening is real…in my experience, the post-softening conductivity increase averages around 10%, though that figure can vary considerably with source water composition and should not be treated as a universal constant. Proper softener programming and adequate rinse cycles are also critical. Older systems or poorly programmed units that allow regeneration byproducts to carry through will produce brief conductivity spikes that field technicians have historically blamed on softeners as a category, rather than on the specific operational failure causing the slug of salty regeneration byproduct that can have TDS levels >10,000 mg/L. This is very important to explore and diagnose properly. Bradford White’s published technical guidance on anode rod selection confirms the conductivity framing: “…in conditions where water is more conductive, including softened water, the sacrificial process in magnesium anode rods is accelerated, and aluminum rods become the preferred material choice for those applications”. Their guidance goes further, suggesting that installers target 10 to 12 grains per gallon of residual hardness rather than treating to zero, on the basis that lower conductivity will extend sacrificial anode life. I disagree with this assertion. It is a simplistic view, since residual hardness does not completely protect against corrosion, especially when the natural conductivity of the water is elevated. As this article documents in detail, scale is non-uniform, and the LSI is an unreliable corrosion predictor in softened water. The WQA (https://wqa.org)’s technical position is that hardness neither causes nor prevents tank corrosion. Bradford White’s 10-12 gpg target reflects a warranty-protection posture for its sacrificial anode products, not a scientifically defensible corrosion management strategy. Under-softening the water to coax another year out of a rod is engineering around the wrong challenge. Any source of elevated conductivity has an impact Ion exchange Softened water is not uniquely aggressive. Conductivity-driven anode acceleration occurs whenever the dissolved ionic load is elevated, regardless of which ions are responsible or where they came from. A raw water source carrying 500 mg/L of TDS in calcium, magnesium, sulfates, and bicarbonates with zero sodium will consume an anode faster than ion exchange softened municipal water with 250 mg/L of TDS. The WQA Corrosion Educational Kit (https://wqa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/article-4-Corosion-and-Soft-water-Vol-V.pdf), authored by Joseph F. Harrison, PE, CWS-VI, and Duane Nowlin, PhD, identifies high mineral concentration as a primary corrosion accelerator because it increases electrical conductivity and therefore the current flow in electrolytic cells. That same document states the conclusion directly: ion exchange softening neither causes nor controls corrosion. The reasoning follows directly from the mechanism itself. Ion Exchange Softening does not change pH, dissolved carbon dioxide, dissolved oxygen, or total mineral concentration. Those are the actual corrosion drivers. Ion exchange changes which cations are in solution; it does not alter the other factors that govern corrosion rate. This is WQA’s official technical position, written by credentialed professionals, and it aligns precisely with the conductivity-based analysis here. The Langelier Saturation Index (LSI) provides a useful but limited professional tool. The LSI calculates whether a given water is likely to precipitate calcium carbonate (scale-forming, positive LSI) or dissolve it (corrosive, negative LSI), using pH, temperature, TDS, alkalinity, and calcium hardness as inputs. Softened water, with calcium hardness removed, shifts the LSI in the negative direction: the water becomes undersaturated with calcium carbonate and therefore (according to Langlier) potentially more prone to dissolving carbonate scale. The WQA Corrosion Educational Kit cautions, however, that the LSI should not be applied directly to ion-exchange-softened water as though it were equivalent to naturally-soft acidic water, because the two are chemically different. Softening does not change pH, alkalinity, or CO₂ content to resemble natural soft waters. Stumm and colleagues, cited in that same WQA document, put the broader limitation plainly: corrosion in natural waters depends on so many interdependent variables that no simple index adequately describes corrosive potential. The LSI is a scale-tendency tool, not a complete corrosion predictor. Use it as one data point among several, which is exactly why a full water analysis by a qualified professional is the non-negotiable first step in any corrosion management decision. Low TDS water below 100 mg/L presents a different but equally valid problem. Naturally soft surface water, RO permeate without remineralization, or harvested rainwater is undersaturated and behaves as a hungry solvent: it seeks ionic equilibrium by extracting minerals from whatever metal surfaces it contacts. High TDS water above 500 mg/L, conversely, drives galvanic corrosion through sheer ionic strength. Many practitioners reference 500 mg/L as a practical upper threshold beyond which active corrosion management is mandatory. The WQRF-commissioned Battelle Memorial Institute study (2009) found that gas storage tank water heaters operated on softened water maintained original factory efficiency ratings across the equivalent of a 15-year simulated service life. Hard water at 26 grains per gallon caused measurable scale accumulation on interior surfaces within 30 days of accelerated testing. Units running on 30 gpg hard water at 100 gallons per day usage suffered efficiency losses approaching 48 percent over their service life, with every 5 gpg of hardness driving an 8 percent efficiency penalty at that usage rate. The efficiency story strongly favors softening. For those tempted to argue that hard water scale provides its own corrosion protection: the WQA Corrosion Educational Kit addresses this too. Scale formation is not uniform. It is heaviest at heat transfer surfaces and low points, with the upper portion of a water heater tank often showing little or no scale at all. Thousands of water heaters fail annually in hard water areas from corrosion occurring under, through, or in locations where protective scale never formed. Hard water scale is simply not a reliable corrosion management strategy; it is an unreliable and uncontrolled byproduct of water chemistry that happens to slow corrosion in some places while accelerating it in others through differential aeration cells. The problem with metallic anodes Sacrificial anode rods are the only corrosion protection mechanism most residential water heaters ship with, and they have been a workable solution for decades in the water chemistry conditions for which they were designed. The problem is that those design conditions describe a narrowing slice of the actual installed base. High-TDS water, chloraminated municipal supplies, and elevated-pH source water each push metallic anode systems further toward failure. The symptoms are real, they are showing up in the field every day, and every one of them is diagnosable and preventable with the right knowledge. Magnesium anodes: rapid depletion and “over-protection” Magnesium is the most electrochemically active of the three common anode materials, sitting well above both aluminum and steel in the galvanic series. That reactivity is precisely its value in standard residential water: it provides strong, reliable cathodic protection across a wide range of conditions. In an elevated-conductivity environment, that same reactivity becomes a liability. The increased conductivity lowers circuit resistance, which drives proportionally higher galvanic current from the anode. The magnesium sacrifices faster, sometimes dramatically so. In “normal-conductivity” water (100 - 300 mg/L TDS), a magnesium anode rod should last five years or more. In high-conductivity water, field reports document complete depletion in as little as six months (higher conductivity = shorter anode lifespan). Once the magnesium material is consumed down to the steel core wire, protection stops entirely and tank corrosion begins. Most homeowners never know this has happened because the tank provides no visible indication of anode status, and inspection requires physically removing the rod. Beyond simple depletion, magnesium over-protection in high-conductivity water produces a unique symptom: When galvanic current runs too high, electrolysis at the water-metal interface generates excess hydrogen gas. That hydrogen has to go somewhere…customers usually report milky or cloudy hot water that takes a minute or more to clear after opening the tap. They describe spurting or inconsistent flow from hot-side fixtures. In the presence of sulfate in the source water or sulfate-reducing bacteria colonizing the lower tank, the excess hydrogen combines with sulfate to produce hydrogen sulfide, the unmistakable rotten egg odor that always tracks the hot side and disappears or diminishes on the cold side. Bradford White’s published guidance (Service Bulletin 109) addresses this failure pattern directly, noting that the magnesium anode generates enough hydrogen to create an odor problem when it reacts with sulfur and bacteria, and recommending replacement with an aluminum-alloy rod to minimize the reaction. A subtler but equally serious consequence of magnesium anode “over-protection” in highly conductive water is damage to the tank lining. The porcelain enamel interior coating of a steel water heater tank is not inert under extreme cathodic current. When current density at the cathode surface exceeds the design range, hydrogen gas evolution can occur directly at the glass-steel interface, causing blistering, micro-fracture, or even spalling of the lining. Once the lining is compromised at multiple sites, the tank is vulnerable to accelerated through-wall corrosion regardless of whether the anode rod is replaced. Aluminum anodes: slower depletion, more complicated byproducts Aluminum rods are often positioned as the sensible compromise for high-conductivity water. They are less reactive than magnesium, which means they deplete more slowly in conductive environments and are less prone to the over-protection failures described above. Major manufacturers including Bradford White recommend this material transition when water conductivity is elevated. That specific guidance is correct in its narrowest sense: aluminum does corrode more slowly than magnesium in high-conductivity water. The problem is that switching rod materials does not address why the original anode was failing. It is a product substitution inside a fundamentally flawed protection strategy. An additional complicating factor is what aluminum puts into the water column while it corrodes. Aluminum oxidizes to form aluminum ions (Al³⁺) in solution. In water with pH below approximately 6.5 or above approximately 8.5, aluminum solubility increases sharply and the rod can release aluminum at elevated rates. A.O. Smith’s Technical Bulletin 14 identifies a specific failure mode in areas of the country where source water pH exceeds 8: aluminum anodes react with the high-pH water to form excessive amounts of aluminum hydroxide (Al(OH)₃) on the anode surface and in the bottom of the tank. Aluminum hydroxide in solution appears as a clear to gray-green gel or as jelly-like beads at drain valves and faucet aerators. It is sticky, coats filter media, clogs aerator screens, and in sufficient quantity produces visibly cloudy or turbid hot water. A.O. Smith’s guidance recommends switching to a magnesium anode and flushing the tank to clear the accumulation. The sediment picture with aluminum anodes extends beyond aluminum hydroxide specifically. As the rod corrodes, oxidized aluminum compounds settle to the tank bottom, joining scale fragments, mineral precipitates, and biological matter in a sediment layer that insulates the heat exchanger surface, increases energy consumption, and creates a protected microenvironment for bacteria. Faucet aerators and showerhead screens clog with white or gray grit. Water filter cartridges may show premature fouling with a white, sandy material. None of these symptoms by themselves tell the homeowner the anode rod is the source; a water treatment professional who asks the right questions during a service call will inevitably recognize the pattern. The health dimension of aluminum anode corrosion: The U.S. EPA classifies aluminum as a secondary contaminant with a Secondary Maximum Contaminant Level (SMCL) of 0.05 to 0.2 mg/L, framed primarily as an aesthetic threshold for color and turbidity. WHO sets a health-based guideline of 0.2 mg/L. The peer-reviewed literature has found associations between elevated aluminum in drinking water and cognitive decline, though the causal question remains scientifically contested. The microbial dimension: The conversation about metallic anode rods almost always focuses on chemistry and corrosion, but it should also address microbiology. A 2023 controlled pilot-scale study from Virginia Tech’s engineering faculty examined the effects of anode type, copper dose, and orthophosphate on hot water plumbing microbiomes using shotgun metagenomic sequencing. The study found that aluminum anodes were associated with enrichment of Mycobacterium avium in bulk water compared to both magnesium anodes and powered titanium anodes. Mycobacterium avium is an opportunistic pathogen of real clinical concern, particularly for immunocompromised individuals, and it is well adapted to hot water plumbing environments. The powered anode performed better in this comparison. While the study was not designed to isolate anode material as the single causal variable for pathogen enrichment, the direction of the finding is consistent with what we already know about how metallic anode corrosion byproducts alter plumbing microbiome composition. The sediment and metal ion environment created by a corroding aluminum rod provides a different microbial habitat than a non-corroding powered anode. What depleted anode rods look like in the field Manufacturers publish inspection criteria, but most homeowners never see them. The universal standard for replacement is when the rod has been consumed to the point where more than six inches of the steel core wire is exposed at either end, or when total cross-sectional diameter has diminished to less than half the original. In practice, the most reliable inspection interval is annual for high-conductivity installations (> 500 mg/L TDS). Lower-conductivity installations may support a two- to three-year interval, but only if the initial water analysis confirmed that chemistry. The symptoms that should prompt an unscheduled inspection are: * hot-side milky or cloudy water that takes more than 30 seconds to clear * rotten egg odor on the hot side only * grit or white sediment at faucet aerators or filter screens * noise from the tank during heating cycles (rumbling or crackling from sediment accumulation) * rust-colored hot water * reduced hot water volume or temperature, which can indicate sediment insulating the heat exchanger. Any of these symptoms should be investigated as a probable anode failure until proven otherwise. The rod needs to be replaced, and the tank needs to be inspected, flushed, and disinfected. Scope: tank-type heaters Everything in this article applies to conventional tank-type water heaters, which use sacrificial anode rods as their primary corrosion protection mechanism. Tankless and indirect water heaters typically do not incorporate anode rods and have a separate corrosion and water quality management conversation. The Battelle study noted that tankless heaters on hard water failed from scale plugging in downstream piping after just 1.6 years of equivalent use at 26 gpg, which is its own compelling argument for softening in those installations. Heat pump water heaters have different internal configurations, and their corrosion management specifics are beyond the scope of this article. If you are working on any configuration other than a conventional storage tank, confirm the manufacturer’s guidance for that unit and understand the electrochemical interactions before making changes. Impressed Current Cathodic Protection If the problem with sacrificial anodes is that they deplete, introduce metal ions into the water, require periodic inspection and replacement timed to water chemistry conditions that most homeowners cannot characterize, and produce failure modes ranging from milky water to glass lining damage to microbial habitat enrichment, then the obvious solution is an anode system that does none of those things. Impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP) is that solution, and it has been used for large-scale corrosion protection of pipelines, ship hulls, and industrial storage tanks for decades. Its application to residential water heaters is direct and well-validated. The operating principle is straightforward. A conventional sacrificial anode relies on the natural electrochemical potential difference between a reactive metal and the steel tank: current flows because of the galvanic series, and the more active metal corrodes. An impressed current system replaces that passive driving force with an external DC power supply. The power supply forces current from an inert anode electrode through the water to the tank wall, making the entire tank interior the cathode in a controlled electrochemical circuit. The steel cannot corrode because it is continuously maintained at a cathodic potential. The anode electrode itself is typically titanium with a mixed metal oxide (MMO) coating or a titanium-platinum composite: dimensionally stable and not dissolving appreciably under normal operating conditions. The current levels involved are small. Most residential ICCP units operate in the range of a few milliamps to tens of milliamps. Power consumption is negligible, typically comparable to a small LED pilot light. Most importantly, nothing significant dissolves into your water. The Virginia Tech metagenomics study noted that powered anodes performed comparably to magnesium anodes in controlling Mycobacterium avium enrichment, and outperformed aluminum anodes in that comparison, providing additional evidence that ICCP does not introduce the problematic byproduct environments that metallic anodes create. How automatic voltage adjustment works This is where the engineering gets interesting, and where ICCP systems demonstrate an intelligence that sacrificial anodes cannot match. Ohm’s Law governs the relationship between voltage, current, and resistance in any circuit, including the electrochemical circuit inside a water heater tank: V = I x R. In an ICCP system designed to deliver a fixed protective current, the required voltage is determined by the total circuit resistance. That resistance is not constant: it changes continuously with water chemistry. When conductivity is high, circuit resistance is low, and the power supply needs only a modest voltage to push the target current through the water to the tank wall. When conductivity is low, resistance increases, and the power supply must increase its output voltage to maintain the same protective current. Well-designed residential ICCP devices incorporate a constant-current regulated power supply that handles this voltage adjustment automatically. The device continuously monitors the return current in the circuit and adjusts output voltage in real time to maintain the target milliamp level regardless of what source water chemistry is doing. If a homeowner forgets to add salt, or if the utility shifts its treatment chemistry seasonally, or if a drought year drives TDS higher in the source water, the ICCP unit adapts without any intervention. It is always delivering the needed amount of protection. Overprotection, meaning excessive cathodic current, is also managed by this feedback loop. Running too much current through a glass-lined tank can damage the lining from hydrogen gas evolution at the cathode surface. A properly regulated constant-current supply prevents this by never exceeding the design protection threshold. This is the exact failure mode that an over-active magnesium anode in softened water can trigger, and it is the mode that ICCP eliminates by design. Sacrificial anodes have no such feedback mechanism. A magnesium rod in highly conductive softened water is simply driving as much current as the galvanic potential difference allows, regardless of whether that current level is appropriate for the specific tank and water chemistry combination. The ICCP system eliminates this entire class of problems by keeping current within a stable and predictable range. ICCP for every softened water installation The argument for impressed current anodes is not merely technical. It is economic and operational, and it is directly relevant to how water treatment dealers build long-term relationships with their customers. A sacrificial anode in softened or high-conductivity water may need replacement every one to three years, depending on water chemistry and temperature. Most homeowners do not know this. Most plumbers do not check them. The tank corrodes quietly after the anode fails, and the first indication is a rust-colored water complaint, water on the floor, or a warranty conversation. At that point, the softener dealer who never mentioned the anode is associated in the customer’s mind with the water heater failure, regardless of causal responsibility. Recommending an ICCP unit proactively eliminates that exposure entirely. An ICCP anode installed in a residential water heater is a one-time specification decision. It requires no periodic replacement, it consumes essentially no metal, and it adapts automatically to changing water chemistry. The only maintenance task is confirming that the power supply indicator light is illuminated, which takes approximately two seconds during any service visit. Retail prices for quality ICCP units are competitive with the lifetime cost of periodic sacrificial anode replacements plus the service labor to perform them. The limitation worth acknowledging honestly: ICCP systems require a continuous power connection. In the event of an extended power outage, the tank is unprotected. Some premium systems address this by incorporating a small backup sacrificial anode that activates in the absence of power. For most residential applications in utility-served areas, the power dependency is not a meaningful practical concern. For off-grid installations or areas with frequent extended outages, it should be considered and planned for. Here’s a fun discussion that I had at the 2026 WQA Convention (https://convention.wqa.org/) in Miami, FL with Vincent Veilleux from Corro-Protec (https://www.corroprotec.com/). They manufacture a great line of ICCP electric Anodes (No, this is not a paid promotion, I just really like the company, their people, and their products): A practical field protocol 1. Test the water first. Know the incoming hardness, TDS, conductivity, pH, and alkalinity before making any treatment recommendation. A complete water analysis is the foundation of any intelligent water quality improvement decision. WQA-certified professionals (https://wqa.org) have the training and testing resources to do this correctly. 2. Specify an ICCP unit as the default recommendation for all softened water installations. It improves the customer’s water-use experience and demonstrates that you are looking at the holistic water infrastructure of the household, not just soap, laundry, dishes, and hair. 3. If specifying a sacrificial anode for cost or installation reasons, match the material to the water conditions and understand the failure modes for that combination. Magnesium rods offer stronger protection in standard conditions but deplete faster in conductive water, produce hydrogen sulfide odor in sulfate-bearing water, and risk glass lining damage through over-protection in very soft or heavily softened supplies. Aluminum and aluminum-zinc rods deplete more slowly in conductive environments and are less reactive with sulfate species, but introduce aluminum ions and aluminum hydroxide into the water column, with the associated sediment, aerator fouling, and health concerns. Neither is ideal for long-term use in softened water. a. Inspect sacrificial anodes on a defined schedule: annually on high-conductivity water, every two to three years on lower-conductivity waters. The universal replacement threshold is more than six inches of exposed core wire at either end, or rod diameter reduced below half the original. Do not wait for customer complaints. Complaints mean the failure has already progressed beyond the anode. 4. Address softener programming: Rinse cycles, salt dosing, and regeneration frequency all affect water quality leaving the softener. A properly programmed system running efficiently is a different operating environment than one that is neglected or improperly calibrated. Some water heater manufacturer guidance suggests targeting residual hardness of 10 to 12 gpg to moderate conductivity and extend anode life. Do not follow it, it just leaves hardness ions in solution that will contribute to scale, reduce appliance and plumbing efficiency, and provide no meaningful corrosion protection. The correct response to elevated conductivity after softening is ICCP, not incomplete softening. Soften the water to Advise customers explicitly not to use hot water from the tank for drinking or cooking. This recommendation stands regardless of anode type or water treatment type. If you have ever drained a water heater, you know what’s lurking inside - don’t drink that! This is the recommendation that most plumbers and water treatment professionals still do not give their customers: Do not use hot water directly from the tank for cooking, making coffee, baby formula, or anything else that goes into a human body. Hot water dissolves metals from plumbing and tank components faster than cold water does. Lead, copper, and zinc can all leach from fittings, fixtures, solder, and supply lines at elevated rates when the water is hot. Sediment accumulated at the tank bottom, including oxidized anode byproducts, bacteria that thrive in the lower-temperature stratified zone near the tank floor, and scale fragments, all represent a water quality profile that bears no resemblance to the treated municipal supply entering the building. NEVER drink from the hot side! The role of certified professionals Water heater manufacturers publish technical guidance on anode specification and inspection intervals, but most homeowners never see it and most plumbers do not specialize in water chemistry. This is where the water treatment industry carries a responsibility that goes beyond just selling softeners and filters. WQA-certified professionals (https://wqa.org), specifically Certified Water Specialists (CWS) and Master Water Specialists (MWS), are trained to evaluate the complete water chemistry picture, not just the hardness number. They understand how softening interacts with corrosivity indices, how TDS affects galvanic dynamics, how anode material selection affects water quality downstream of the heater, and how to specify the right corrosion protection strategy for the specific water conditions in each installation. The WQA’s certification program exists precisely because water chemistry is not intuitive and the end-users is looking to the dealer to improve the quality of their life through better water quality. The conversation about anode protection, including an honest recommendation to install ICCP and stop drinking from the hot tap, is the kind of holistic guidance that distinguishes a certified professional from someone who just sells equipment. Remember: we are there to give them the quality of water that they want and deserve. Metallic anode corrosion touches on water quality in a comprehensive sense, including the microbial community in the hot water distribution system. WQA-certified professionals are trained to think about the whole water system, not just one parameter in isolation, that is exactly the kind of systems-level thinking that separates a credentialed practitioner from a mere parts-swapper. Bottom line Elevated electrical conductivity, from any source, accelerates the electrochemical process that consumes sacrificial anode rods. Softening changes the ionic profile of the water in ways that increase ion count which makes the water more conductive (on average ~10%). Metallic anode rods, whether magnesium or aluminum, are band-aids. Each type has specific failure modes that produce recognizable symptoms in the field: milky water, hydrogen sulfide odor, aluminum hydroxide gel, grit at aerators, sediment accumulation, and in the worst cases, glass lining damage from over-protection. The right answer (on hard or softened water) is an impressed current cathodic protection system. ICCP units protect tanks without adding metals into the water, adapt automatically to changing water chemistry through constant-current regulation, require no periodic replacement, produce none of the byproduct failure modes of metallic anodes, and eliminate the category of anode-rod maintenance failures that end water heater service life prematurely. The efficiency data from the WQRF Battelle study is unambiguous on the softening side of the equation, and the engineering case for ICCP is equally clear on the corrosion protection side. What a great time to be in the water business! Sources and further reading A.O. Smith Corporation. Technical Bulletin 14: Aluminum Hydroxide. hotwater.com/info-center/technical-bulletins/bulletin-14.html (http://hotwater.com/info-center/technical-bulletins/bulletin-14.html) Battelle Memorial Institute / WQRF (2009). Benefits of Removal of Water Hardness from a Water Supply. Water Quality Research Foundation, Lisle, IL. https://www.wqrf.org/uploads/8/3/5/5/83551838/2009_energysavings_executive_summary_final.pdf (https://www.wqrf.org/uploads/8/3/5/5/83551838/2009_energysavings_executive_summary_final.pdf) Bradford White Corporation. Water Heater Anode Rods: Technical Bulletin. bradfordwhite.com/forthepro-bulletins/water-heater-anode-rods/ (https://bradfordwhite.com/forthepro-bulletins/water-heater-anode-rods/) Bradford White Corporation. Service Bulletin 109: Hydrogen Sulfide Odor and Chlorinating Water Heaters. bradfordwhite.com/hydrogen-sulfide-odor-and-chlorinating-water-heaters-109/ (http://bradfordwhite.com/hydrogen-sulfide-odor-and-chlorinating-water-heaters-109/) California OEHHA (2001). Public Health Goal for Aluminum in Drinking Water. https://oehha.ca.gov/sites/default/files/media/downloads/water/chemicals/phg/aluminumf.pdf (https://oehha.ca.gov/sites/default/files/media/downloads/water/chemicals/phg/aluminumf.pdf) Flaten, T.P. (2001). Aluminium as a risk factor in Alzheimer’s disease, with emphasis on drinking water. Brain Research Bulletin 55(2):187–196. DOI: 10.1016/s0361-9230(01)00459-2 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11470314/). PMID: 11470314. Harrison, J.F. and Nowlin, D. (n.d.). Corrosion and Soft Water. WQA Educational Kit Issue V, Section IV. Water Quality Association (https://www.wqa.org), Lisle, IL. Langelier, W.F. (1936). The Analytical Control of Anti-Corrosion Water Treatment. Journal of the American Water Works Association 28(10):1500–1521. Song, Y., Finkelstein, R., Rhoads, W.J., Edwards, M.A., and Pruden, A. (2023). Shotgun Metagenomics Reveals Impacts of Copper and Water Heater Anodes on Pathogens and Microbiomes in Hot Water Plumbing Systems. Environmental Science and Technology 57(36):13612–13624. DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.3c03568 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37643149/). PMC10501123. Song, Y., Pruden, A., Rhoads, W.J., and Edwards, M.A. (2023). Pilot-scale assessment reveals effects of anode type and orthophosphate in governing antimicrobial capacity of copper for Legionella pneumophila control. Water Research 242:120178. DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2023.120178 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37307684/). PMID: 37307684. U.S. EPA. Secondary Drinking Water Standards: Guidance for Nuisance Chemicals. https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/secondary-drinking-water-standards-guidance-nuisance-chemicals (https://www.epa.gov/sdwa/secondary-drinking-water-standards-guidance-nuisance-chemicals) WHO (2010). Aluminium in Drinking-Water: Background Document for WHO Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality (https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/wash-documents/wash-chemicals/aluminium.pdf). WHO/HSE/WSH/10.01/13. NSF International / ANSI. NSF/ANSI 44: Residential Cation Exchange Water Softeners. WQA Gold Seal Certification Program. https://www.wqa.org/certification-testing/product-certification/gold-seal (https://www.wqa.org/certification-testing/product-certification/gold-seal) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gregreyneke.substack.com (https://gregreyneke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   10 Aug 2026

   Product liability can be weird

   A jury sat through seven days of testimony. The suit was brought by Brian Miller, a Kansas dairy farmer with decades of tractor experience. It heard from his experts, from CNH’s engineers, and from Miller himself about the moment he jumped off a moving tractor to clear an object from its path and was crushed under the seed drill it was pulling. The jury found for Miller and put sixty percent of the fault on CNH Industrial America. Then the Tenth Circuit reversed the whole thing. That reversal, handed down July 21, 2026 in Miller v. CNH Industrial America (https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/files/opinions/010111473751.pdf), is worth your attention whether you build tractors, water softeners, reverse osmosis systems, or chemical dosing equipment. We operate in an era of record setting jury verdicts, an era where a plaintiff’s lawyer can win seven days of trial, sixty percent fault, and still lose everything on appeal. Understanding exactly where the law still protects manufacturers and dealers from claims dressed up as warning failures, when the real issue is a person ignoring a danger everybody already understands, is not optional anymore. It is survival. The facts Miller had operated tractors his whole working life. On the day of his injury he slowed his tractor to a crawl, between four and five miles an hour, and stepped off while it was still moving to retrieve something in his path. The tractor kept rolling. Its thirty foot seed drill ran over him. CNH’s five hundred page manual told him more than once not to dismount a moving tractor. It told him to park on level ground, set the parking brake, lower the implements, and stop the engine before leaving the seat. The cab had an alarm that sounded if an operator left the seat without setting the brake. Miller argued none of that mattered because one line in the manual, stating the park brake engages automatically if the operator leaves the seat for more than five seconds, should have told him more clearly that this automatic engagement would not actually stop a tractor already in motion. The Tenth Circuit was not persuaded. Kansas law, like the law in most states, excuses manufacturers from warning about dangers that are patent, open, or obvious to a reasonable user. The court’s own words carry the point better than any paraphrase could: a reasonable person should know that leaving a moving vehicle and stopping in front of it is likely to cause injury. Miller’s own expert witness testified that stepping off a moving tractor would require someone to be, in his words, suicidal. The procedural twist Whether a danger is open and obvious is what a jury decides after hearing arguments from both sides. That is precisely why Miller’s win at trial seemed final. The Tenth Circuit explained that this general rule has an exception…when the evidentiary record points in only one direction, the fact question becomes a legal one a court can resolve, even after a jury has already ruled the other way (Miller v. CNH Industrial America, 2026). That is not a small technicality. It means a defendant who loses at trial is not necessarily out of options if the underlying record never actually supported a contrary conclusion. CNH renewed its motion for judgment as a matter of law after the verdict, preserving exactly this argument. The lesson for anyone facing litigation in our industry is straightforward. Document the record during discovery and trial as though the appeal is already being written, because it often is. The Restatement (Third) of Torts frames it plainly: a warning is not required when the product’s own obvious danger is already the warning. The Tenth Circuit has applied this logic before, holding that a reasonable tractor operator would already understand the risk of falling off a tractor without a seatbelt (Ahrens v. Ford Motor Co., 2003 (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/340/1142/588042/)). The Kansas Supreme Court reached a similar conclusion when it held that manufacturers can assume ordinary users already know that alcohol burns and knives cut, without a label reminding them (Delaney v. Deere & Co., 2000). Contrast this with Kincaid v. Kubota Tractor Corp. (2020) (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ks-court-of-appeals/2068623.html), a case Miller’s counsel leaned on and lost. In Kincaid, a passenger riding on the front of a skid steer was injured when its grapple attachment trapped him against the cab. The Kansas Court of Appeals let that claim proceed because the plaintiff had not read the operator’s manual and did not understand the exterior warning sticker as a general prohibition against riding on the machine. The difference is not academic. Kincaid turned on what one specific person actually knew about an unusual practice. Miller turned on what any reasonable person already understands about tractors in general. Subjective ignorance of a specific warning is a different animal from an objectively obvious hazard, and courts treat them differently. When warnings become theater Here is where I want to editorialize a little, because three decades in this trade has taught me that the fear behind Miller is not new, and manufacturers have been reacting to it for decades in ways that would be funny if they were not also so expensive and time-consuming. In 2009, the Foundation for Fair Civil Justice ran its annual Wacky Warning Label (https://www.labelandnarrowweb.com/avoid-death-wacky-warning-labels/) contest and gave the top prize to a small tractor manufactured by New Holland. The label read, in full: avoid death (Forbes, 2011). New Holland, for anyone who does not follow the machinery world closely, is a brand under the same corporate umbrella as the defendant in Miller. Same industry, same instinct, the same fear of being the next headline. That fear did not appear out of nowhere, it came from decades of manufacturers watching juries punish companies for warnings that were genuinely inadequate, then overcorrecting into warnings that insult the reader’s intelligence. Laundry machine tags that tell you not to put a person inside. Stroller tags that tell you to remove the child before folding it up, a label that probably exists because someone, somewhere, actually folded a stroller with a child still in it and then sued over the lack of a label telling them not to. Chainsaw labels warning against grabbing the spinning blade with your hands, prompted by a real injury and a real lawsuit that a jury found in the plaintiff’s favor. I want to be fair here, because it is easy to wave all of this away as frivolous litigation run amok. The case most people cite as the poster child for lawsuit abuse, the McDonald’s hot coffee case, gets treated as a punchline more often than it gets treated honestly. Stella Liebeck suffered third degree burns requiring skin grafts after coffee served at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit spilled in her lap, and internal McDonald’s documents showed the company already knew of hundreds of prior burn complaints before her injury. That is not a story about a woman blaming a company for the ordinary fact that coffee is hot. It is a story about a company that had already been warned, repeatedly, and chose not to change anything until a jury made the decision expensive enough to matter. Genuinely dangerous products deserve genuinely serious warnings, and companies that know about a hazard and sit on it deserve to the consequences. The problem is not that our legal system holds companies accountable for real, non-obvious hazards. The problem is that the same system gives plaintiffs’ counsel every incentive to argue that any hazard, however obvious, was actually a documentation failure in disguise. Miller’s team tried exactly that argument, built around one ambiguous sentence buried in a five hundred page manual, and it took a full trial and an appeal to sort out the difference between a real warning gap and a manufactured one. That process is expensive, even when you win. Ask any manufacturer who has sat through a seven day trial defending a case they eventually won on appeal whether that felt like justice moving efficiently. Either way, it cost you money and time. Prop 65 Nowhere is this warning fatigue more visible than California’s Proposition 65 (https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65). Our industry ships enough fittings, resin, tanks, control valves, and chemistry into California that every manufacturer and distributor reading this has run into it directly. Prop 65 is the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/california/title-27/division-4/chapter-1), and it requires a clear and reasonable warning before selling a product that exposes a Californian to a listed chemical above a set threshold. That is a reasonable idea on paper, but in practice, it has become something closer to a tax on caution. The mechanism is what breaks it. Prop 65 is enforced largely through private lawsuits, the so called bounty hunter provision, where any individual or law firm can sue a business over a missing or inadequate warning and collect a share of the penalty. California’s own Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the agency that administers the law, has acknowledged the predictable result. Businesses facing the threat of multimillion dollar settlements started slapping the generic short form warning on products regardless of size, regardless of actual chemical content, and often without knowing which chemical, if any, was actually present (Assent, 2025). OEHHA’s own regulatory filing put it plainly: the short form warning was meant for small packaging where a full warning would not physically fit, and it became a prophylactic label applied out of fear rather than fact (California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, 2025). That overuse has real consequences beyond the absurdity of it. When every plastic fitting, every resin bag, and every chemical drum carries the same generic cancer and reproductive harm warning, the customer standing in front of it learns nothing. A warning that applies to everything communicates nothing about anything in particular, and it trains people to treat every warning label the same way most of us treat the fine print on a software update, which is to say not at all. California has started correcting course, in fits and starts. OEHHA adopted amendments in December 2024, effective January 2025 with a phase in period running to 2028, that require the short form warning to name at least one specific chemical rather than relying on a vague catchall. Courts have pushed back too…in May 2025, a federal district court in California struck down the Prop 65 warning requirement for acrylamide in food, ruling that the state cannot compel businesses to warn about a chemical when the underlying science does not support a scientific consensus on the actual risk. That ruling matters beyond acrylamide and beyond food. It is a court telling a regulator that a warning requirement built on litigation fear instead of settled science runs into real constitutional limits. For manufacturers and distributors in our trade, the reasonable path runs down the middle. Do not reflexively slap a Prop 65 label on every SKU because a lawyer told you it is cheaper than the risk of a bounty hunter suit. That approach is exactly the overuse OEHHA itself flagged, and it buries your genuinely necessary warnings, the ones about chemical incompatibility in a feed system or the ones about a pressurized vessel, under a sea of boilerplate that customers have learned to ignore. Actually test or verify what is in your products before you label them, rather than warning blind. If your resin, your fittings, or your chemistry genuinely contain a listed substance above the threshold, warn clearly, name the chemical as the new short form rule requires, and stand behind that warning with real documentation. Train your sales and counter staff to answer Prop 65 questions honestly instead of shrugging and pointing at the sticker. A customer who asks what the warning actually means deserves a real answer, not a liability reflex, and a well trained WQA certified professional is exactly the person who can give one. Do not confuse a Prop 65 label with an admission of danger, and do not let a warning become your entire safety strategy. A sticker is not a substitute for the same documented installation and training practices that protect you against every other warning claim discussed in this piece. A parallel worth drawing from our own industry Water treatment equipment sees both sides of this coin, and it is worth being honest about the difference. A 2020 water heater case out of the District of New Jersey shows the flip side of Miller. Plaintiffs alleged that Honeywell’s water heater shutoff valves used a plastic thermowell casing that prematurely eroded and leaked. The court dismissed the failure to warn claim, not because the danger was open and obvious, but because the plaintiffs never showed Honeywell knew or should have known the valves would deteriorate early, and never tied the alleged defect to their actual damages (Lazarus, 2020). That case is a reminder that failure to warn claims fail for different reasons depending on the facts. Sometimes the danger really is open and obvious. Sometimes the plaintiff simply cannot connect the dots between an alleged defect and an actual injury. Both outcomes protect manufacturers, but for entirely different legal reasons, and conflating them in a defense strategy is a mistake. But do not mistake either of these outcomes for a blanket shield. A Colorado family’s lawsuit against a water softening company (https://www.robinsonandhenry.com/blog/personal-injury/water-softener-illness-property-loss/) shows exactly where a real, non-obvious hazard sits, and where our industry actually deserves the liability it gets. The installer skipped an air gap, the standard, well understood safeguard against backflow contamination, and the resulting back siphoning pulled contaminated wastewater, laced with excess sodium and bacteria, into the family’s drinking water. No layperson walking into that home would have looked at the plumbing and understood the risk. That is a genuinely hidden hazard created by a shortcut during installation, and it is precisely the kind of claim the open and obvious doctrine was never meant to protect against. Our industry can do real, serious harm when installations skip fundamentals, and no amount of Miller style appellate reasoning changes that. Why this matters more this year than last Product liability verdicts are not behaving the way they did a decade ago. The median nuclear verdict in product liability cases, meaning any award of ten million dollars or more, rose from twenty four million dollars in 2013 to thirty six million dollars in 2022, an increase of fifty percent (Institute for Legal Reform, 2024). In 2024 alone, corporate defendants across the country faced one hundred thirty five verdicts exceeding ten million dollars, and awards above one hundred million dollars nearly doubled from the year before (Marathon Strategies, 2025). Product liability remains the single largest category driving this trend. The Supreme Court is watching this space too. As of this writing, the Court is weighing Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, a case testing how far federal regulatory approval can preempt state failure to warn claims. Whatever the outcome, the fact that the nation’s highest court felt compelled to take up a failure to warn preemption question tells you how much pressure this area of law is under right now. This is not a quiet corner of civil procedure. It is a live, contested, and inevitably expensive battlefield. None of the underlying rise in verdict size is because tractors, water heaters, or water softeners have become more dangerous. It reflects a litigation environment where plaintiffs’ counsel are incentivized to reframe an obvious hazard as a documentation failure, because juries increasingly reward that framing with enormous awards. Miller is a data point showing that at least some appellate courts are still willing to hold the line when the underlying record does not support it, even after a jury has already been persuaded otherwise. But an appellate win two years and one trial later is a small comfort to a business that spent that time and money defending itself. The bet nobody else in the world takes Here is where I want to step back from the specific case and talk about a structural feature of American civil litigation that most of us never think to question. In the United States, each side pays its own attorney fees regardless of who wins. This is called the American Rule, and it dates to the founding era, reinforced by the Supreme Court in 1975 when it held that federal courts cannot order a losing party to cover the winner’s fees unless a specific statute or contract says otherwise (Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 1975 (https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/421/240/)). Nearly every other Western democracy does it differently. England, most of continental Europe, and South Africa (where I first read law) all follow some version of what is called the English Rule, where the losing party pays the prevailing party’s costs, taxed according to a court approved schedule rather than reimbursed dollar for dollar (Federal Judicial Center, n.d.). Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Nigeria, and South Korea each run their own variation, but the common thread across nearly all of them is the same. Bringing a weak claim carries a real financial consequence if you lose. I have done business on multiple continents, and the contrast is not subtle. If I sue a supplier in South Africa and lose, I am on the hook for their taxed party and party costs, a real number, not a token gesture. That single fact changes the calculus before a claim is ever filed. A lawyer has to look a client in the eye and explain that pursuing a weak case is not free just because it might be profitable. In the United States, that conversation rarely happens, because it does not need to. A plaintiff who loses walks away from the courthouse having paid nothing toward the other side’s defense, in the overwhelming majority of cases. The exceptions we do have are thinner than most people assume. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_54) lets a prevailing party recover taxable costs, but the costs Congress actually defined under 28 U.S.C. § 1920 (https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-1999-title28-section1920&num=0&edition=1999)cover filing fees, transcripts, and a handful of similarly modest line items, not attorney fees, which are the overwhelming majority of what litigation actually costs. Rule 11 sanctions (https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_11) exist for genuinely frivolous filings, but courts apply them sparingly and reluctantly. Fee shifting statutes exist for narrow categories, patent cases deemed exceptional, certain civil rights claims, specific state consumer statutes, but nothing resembling a general rule. CNH Industrial was correct on the law in Miller, but it still had to fund a seven day jury trial and a full appeal to prove it, and nothing in the outcome required Brian Miller or his counsel to reimburse a dollar of what that cost. I want to be fair to the other side of this argument, because a one sided case is a weaker case. Defenders of the American Rule point out, correctly, that a strict loser pays system can chill legitimate claims. A person with a genuine injury but limited resources may be unwilling to risk exposure to a well funded defendant’s legal bill, even when their claim has real merit. That concern explains why civil rights and employment statutes in this country often shift fees only one direction, toward a prevailing plaintiff, precisely to preserve access to court for people who could not otherwise afford to bring a valid claim. But there is a middle path between the American Rule as it exists today and a full English style indemnity rule, and South Africa’s own system points toward it. Party and party costs there are not a blank check. They are calculated against a court approved tariff, a fraction of actual attorney client fees, enough to create real consequence without pricing an ordinary person out of the courthouse entirely. A modest, tariff based cost shifting rule in American product liability litigation would not close the door on genuine injuries. It would simply mean that a plaintiff’s counsel weighing whether to file a claim built on one ambiguous sentence in a five hundred page manual has to weigh a real cost against a speculative reward, instead of a system where filing is essentially free and settlement pressure does the rest of the work. Until that changes, businesses in our industry should assume every claim, however thin, carries no built in disincentive on the other side, and plan their documentation and defense budgets accordingly. What owners need to do before the truck ever leaves the shop None of this should be read as license to skip warnings or documentation. Genuinely “non-obvious hazards” in water treatment equipment, products, and processes do require clear, specific, and prominent warnings. The open and obvious defense only protects against hazards a reasonable person already understands, and the Colorado air gap case above shows exactly what happens when a company skips the fundamentals instead. Here is where ownership needs to focus: * Build a written installation standard for every product line you sell, and require every technician to sign off against it on every job, not just the complicated ones. A checklist that gets used on ninety percent of jobs and skipped on the ten percent that feel routine is a checklist that will fail you on exactly the job that ends up in front of a jury. * Separate the obvious from the technical in every manual and every training session. A caution not to bypass a pressure relief valve deserves prominent, specific instruction because the failure mode is not intuitive to most users. A caution not to touch a spinning auger is closer to Miller’s situation, and burying it under twenty other equally emphasized warnings dilutes the ones that matter. * Use certified people on certified installations, full stop. A WQA Certified Installer or Certified Water Specialist follows documented procedures that create exactly the paper trail a court looks for when deciding whether a plaintiff’s theory has any support in the actual record. An uncertified installation with no documentation gives plaintiff’s counsel more room to argue the record is ambiguous, which is precisely the opening Miller’s team tried and failed to use. * Choose NSF/ANSI certified products where they exist, and say so in writing on the proposal and the invoice. Certified products carry independent, third party verification of performance claims and labeling adequacy. That kind of documentation does not just reduce the odds of a design defect claim succeeding. It also gives your legal team a stronger factual record if a warning adequacy dispute ever reaches a jury. * Keep customer facing manuals and leave behind materials specific, not exhaustive. Miller’s manual worked in CNH’s favor because its core warnings were clear, repeated, and consistent, not because it tried to anticipate every conceivable misuse. A five hundred page manual with one buried ambiguous sentence still won the case because the surrounding warnings were unambiguous and consistent with what any reasonable operator already understood. A manual that reads like the wacky warning label contest protects nobody and trains customers to ignore every warning equally. * Carry the insurance and reserve the legal budget for a full trial, not just a settlement. Assume any claim will be litigated to verdict, not settled quietly. The nuclear verdict environment increasingly rewards plaintiffs who reject reasonable settlement offers and push for trial. Build your documentation and defense posture as though every installation could end up in front of a jury, because in this legal climate, more of them will. What technicians need to do on every single job Ownership can build the best policy manual in the state, but it means nothing if the person standing in the crawlspace or the mechanical room does not carry it out the same way every time. This is where liability actually gets created or avoided, one job at a time. Photograph the installation before you leave, every time you visit for maintenance. Backflow prevention devices, air gaps, bypass valve positions, pressure gauge readings, and the finished connections all belong in dated photos attached to the job file. If a claim ever surfaces two years later, your memory of one job among thousands will not hold up, but those photos will. Never verbally promise a performance outcome beyond what the spec sheet and the certification documentation actually support. A conversational reassurance in someone’s kitchen, this will fix everything, becomes a plaintiff’s exhibit if anything ever goes wrong down the line. Point to the certified performance data instead, and let the customer read it themselves. Walk the customer through bypass valve operation and shutoff locations before you leave, and have them initial a leave behind sheet confirming you did. This single habit would have changed the outcome in more than one lawsuit I have watched unfold over the years, including cases where a homeowner or a following contractor bypassed a system incorrectly months later and blamed the original installer. Flag anything outside your scope in writing on the work order, even when the customer declines the fix. If you notice a missing air gap, an ungrounded outlet near a wet area, or a pressure relief valve that looks original to a thirty year old install, document that you saw it and told the customer, whether or not they hire you to fix it that day. An unaddressed hazard you noted in writing is a very different legal position than one you saw and said nothing about. Follow the manufacturer’s installation instructions to the letter, especially on the steps that might feel “unnecessary”. The air gap requirement that got a Colorado family sick was not some obscure technicality. It is standard practice precisely because skipping it can create a real, hidden hazard. The instructions that feel like overkill on a Tuesday afternoon are usually the ones that matter most when something goes wrong. Report near-misses and unusual customer questions back to ownership, not just completed jobs. If three customers in a month ask the same confused question about a valve or a control setting, that pattern is telling you the manual or the training is not working, and it is much cheaper to fix the training now than to fix it after a lawsuit. If the law made us warn about everything Before I close, let me have a little fun with this, because the New Holland tractor tag proves the point better than another paragraph of legal analysis could. It is worth imagining what our own industry’s manuals would look like if every hazard, however obvious, had to be spelled out in exhausting detail. Something like this. * Warning: water is wet. Do not attempt to dry yourself with it. * Soft water drowns you just as fast as hard water, but your corpse will have noticeably fewer scale deposits. * Caution: chlorine smells like a pool because it is one of the things that makes a pool smell like a pool. Do not be shocked by shock treatment. * Reverse osmosis will not reverse your bad decisions, only your dissolved solids. * Softener resin beads are not a snack, a garnish, or a substitute for rice at your wedding. * Do not stare directly at the UV lamp. Your eyeballs already know this, but our legal department insists on saying it anyway. * Reverse Osmosis will not reverse anything else. It only fixes water, not your bad life decisions. Nobody wants a manual that reads like that, and no court should ever force one into existence. That is the real value of the open and obvious doctrine. It keeps warnings meaningful by reserving them for the hazards a reasonable person would not already expect, so the one warning that actually matters does not get buried under fifty that do not. The larger point The litigious environment that concerns all of us is not the genuinely hidden defect, the missing air gap or the mislabeled chemical feed line. It goes after the assumption that any hazard, no matter how obvious, can be recast as an inadequate warning if a plaintiff’s lawyer looks hard enough for one ambiguous sentence in a long manual. Miller is proof that at least one federal appellate court will still draw that line, even against a jury verdict that said otherwise. For dealers, manufacturers, and professionals in the water treatment industry, the lesson is not to warn about everything conceivable. The lesson is to be precise about what genuinely requires a warning, document your installations and training as rigorously as WQA certification standards demand, and trust that the record you build today is the defense you may need to depend on tomorrow. One last thing before you go...I am not a lawyer. While decades of sitting through depositions and reading appellate opinions have given me plenty of strong opinions, a law degree is not among my credentials. If you are facing a real claim, real counsel beats a blogger every time, no matter how many wacky warning labels I have memorized. What a great time to be in the water business! Further reading Ahrens v. Ford Motor Co., 340 F.3d 1142 (10th Cir. 2003) (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/340/1142/588042/). Assent. (2025). Revised Proposition 65 short-form warnings, explained (https://www.assent.com/blog/revised-proposition-65-short-form-warnings-explained/). California Chamber of Commerce v. Bonta, No. 2:19-cv-02019 (E.D. Cal. May 2, 2025). (https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/219cv2019.pdf) California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. (2025). Proposition 65 final statement of reasons: Clear and reasonable warnings (https://oehha.ca.gov/sites/default/files/media/2025-01/fsor112624approval_0.pdf). Delaney v. Deere & Co., 999 P.2d 930 (Kan. 2000) (https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/219/1195/532110/). Federal Judicial Center. (n.d.). Attorney's fees. Judiciaries Worldwide (https://judiciariesworldwide.fjc.gov/attorneys-fees). Forbes. (2011). Dumbest warning labels (https://www.forbes.com/2011/02/23/dumbest-warning-labels-entrepreneurs-sales-marketing-warning-labels.html). Hilton & Somer LLC. (2025). The weirdest warning labels: Why they exist and the cases behind them (https://www.hiltonsomer.com/the-weirdest-warning-labels-why-they-exist-and-the-cases-behind-them/). Institute for Legal Reform. (2024). Nuclear verdicts: An update on trends, causes, and solutions. U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (https://instituteforlegalreform.com/research/nuclear-verdicts-an-update-on-trends-causes-and-solutions/). Kincaid v. Kubota Tractor Corp., No. 121,206, 2020 WL 3022977 (Kan. Ct. App. June 5, 2020). (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ks-court-of-appeals/2068623.html) Lazarus, A. J. (2020). A failure of leakage linkage: The District of New Jersey sinks a proposed class action under Tennessee and California laws over leaky water heaters (https://www.faegredrinkeronproducts.com/2020/01/a-failure-of-leakage-linkage/). Faegre Drinker on Products. Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants, No. CV-93-02419, 1994 WL 36293297 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/Liebeck_v_McDonalds_Restaurants_1994) (Bernalillo County, N.M. Dist. Ct. Aug. 18, 1994). Marathon Strategies. (2025). Corporate verdicts go thermonuclear: 2025 edition. https://marathonstrategies.com/report/corporate-verdicts-go-thermonuclear-2025-edition/ (https://marathonstrategies.com/report/corporate-verdicts-go-thermonuclear-2025-edition/) Miller v. CNH Industrial America, LLC, No. 24-3023 (10th Cir. July 21, 2026). (https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinion/24-3023) Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, No. 24-1068 (U.S. argued Apr. 27, 2026). (https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1068_n7ip.pdf) Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability (https://store.lexisnexis.com/en-us/products/restatement-of-the-law-third-torts-products-liability-sku-us-ebook-37977-epub.html) § 2 cmt. j (Am. L. Inst. 1998). Robinson & Henry. (2025). Water softener led to illnesses and property damage. (https://www.robinsonandhenry.com/blog/personal-injury/water-softener-illness-property-loss/) Sidley Austin LLP. (2026). New changes to California's Proposition 65 short-form warning labels (https://www.sidley.com/en/insights/newsupdates/2025/02/new-changes-to-californias-proposition-65-shortform-warning-labels). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gregreyneke.substack.com (https://gregreyneke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

4. 

   24 Jul 2026

   Sales vs. Service in Water Treatment:

   There is a meme that captures something I have watched play out in boardrooms and jobsites for thirty years. A golden retriever sits at a restaurant table, ignored, looking miserable. The label on the dog: “Engineering team, knowing the solution is not technically possible.” At the table, happy and chatting: “Sales team presenting the solution in PowerPoint” and “Excited customer.”It is funny. It is also a slow-motion organizational disaster, and most water treatment companies treat it as an unavoidable feature of doing business rather than a correctable failure of management.In this episode of Drinkable, I go after the full picture: the handoffs nobody manages well, the compensation structures generating the problem, what Frank Blau, Jim Abrams, and Nexstar Network figured out the hard way, the private equity consolidation reshaping our channel, and what independent dealers can do that no PE-backed platform ever will. Companion episode to this article: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gregreyneke.substack.com (https://gregreyneke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

5. 

   15 Jun 2026

   Their worst day

   About this episode Every service call in the water treatment industry is a trust problem before it is a technical problem. In this episode, Greg draws on behavioral science research from a former FBI special agent to explain why homeowners resist the very professionals who can help them most, what that resistance actually signals, and what skilled technicians can do about it in the first five minutes of a service call. The conversation covers the psychology of threat response, the difference between sympathy and empathy in a customer interaction, why water quality problems create a uniquely high vulnerability gap compared to other home service trades, and how WQA certification gives both technicians and homeowners a concrete bridge across that gap. If you work in home service, manage technicians, or train water treatment professionals, this episode is for you. Reference Schafer, J. R., & Karlins, M. (2015). The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over. Touchstone / Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4767-5448-2. Available wherever good books are sold. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit gregreyneke.substack.com (https://gregreyneke.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

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