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Our guest today is Bruce T. Ketrick Jr., president of the Association of Water Technologies. Bruce began his career in the pharmaceutical industry as a sales representative and later a technical trainer. Bruce\'s career in water technologies started 13 years ago with Guardian CSC. During his employment with Guardian CSC he has held various positions including Field Service Representative, Sales Management, and Business Manager. Bruce has been involved in the creation and management of new companies and divisions including: EnvoGuard an environmental products company, KTS (Ketrick Technical Services) a custom blending, specialty products, technical support and consulting company, and the Equipment Division of Guardian CSC offering design, installation and support of industrial water technologies equipment with a focus on controls, reverse osmosis, pretreatment and filters.

We also talk about water softeners and answer some listener questions in \\u201cPinks and Blues.\\u201d

Our guest today is Bruce T. Ketrick Jr., president of the Association of Water Technologies. Bruce began his career in the pharmaceutical industry as a sales representative and later a technical trainer. Bruce\'s career in water technologies started 13 years ago with Guardian CSC. During his employment with Guardian CSC he has held various positions including Field Service Representative, Sales Management, and Business Manager. Bruce has been involved in the creation and management of new companies and divisions including: EnvoGuard an environmental products company, KTS (Ketrick Technical Services) a custom blending, specialty products, technical support and consulting company, and the Equipment Division of Guardian CSC offering design, installation and support of industrial water technologies equipment with a focus on controls, reverse osmosis, pretreatment and filters.

Bruce earned his BS in Biology from Juniata College and holds the CWT (Certified Water Technologist) designation. In this episode Bruce is sharing with us how to get involved in associations such as AWT. He\\u2019s also telling us what\\u2019s going on in the association, what one can expect from the association, how he got involved and where he sees AWT going in the future.

We also talk about water softeners and answer some listener questions in \\u201cPinks and Blues.\\u201d

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Water Softeners

Water softening is a technique that serves the removal of the ions that cause the water to be hard (or form scale,) in most cases calcium and magnesium ions. Iron ions may also be removed during softening. A water softener is a unit that is used to soften water, by removing the minerals that cause the water to be hard. If you\\u2019ve ever taken a softener apart you\\u2019ll notice that it has resin beads inside. The purpose of the resin beads is to provide an exchange surface for ion. The ions we\\u2019re specifically talking about is calcium and magnesium.The resin is full of sodium and we\\u2019re putting it online and we\\u2019re putting hard water through it. This hard water contains calcium and magnesium and it\\u2019s flowing through across the resin bead.

The resin bead wants the calcium and magnesium so it spits off the sodium and collects the calcium and magnesium until there\\u2019s no more sodium for it to trade. Once that happens, we start passing hard water again which isn\\u2019t the purpose of the water softener. Now we have to go through the process of regeneration. The resin is also acting as a filter. In order to regenerate to softener you have to follow five steps. The first step is to backwash where we reverse the flow. The next step is brining, brine travels through the salt storage area up into the resin tank. Step three is the slow rinse, where we flush hard minerals and brine from the resin tank into the drain. The fourth step is the fast rinse, the same as the slow rinse, just faster. It packs down the resin beads to make sure there\\u2019s no channeling. The final step is refilling the brine tank. Now that you have a water softener you have to make sure you test properly for it.

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Key Points

\\u2022 How Bruce found himself in the business of water treatment.
\\u2022 Hear more about the dynamic of second and multi-generational businesses
\\u2022 Why flexibility and decision making is both a positive and a negative for business owners.
\\u2022 The importance of listening and asking questions in order to learn.
\\u2022 Common mistakes made by water treaters.
\\u2022 What holding the CWT designation means for Bruce.
\\u2022 Hear about Bruce\\u2019s journey starting out in the AWT and his rise to president.
\\u2022 Understand Bruce\\u2019s tasks during his leadership year as president of the AWT.
\\u2022 How the AWT is laser focused on the water treatment industry.
\\u2022 Find out why decisions made at the AWT are made on the benefit and values of membership.
\\u2022 Discover the purpose and mission of the AWT.
\\u2022 Resources being spent on online fundamentals by the AWT.
\\u2022 Identify how a new water treater can take advantage of offerings by the AWT.
\\u2022 Tools and resources being made available through the AWT.
\\u2022 Hear more about the upcoming AWT Convention taking place in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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Quotes

\\u201cIf you\\u2019re not changing and growing all the time, you\\u2019re not going to succeed.\\u201d - Bruce T. Kenrick Jr. -

\\u201cThe presidential year is actually more of a leadership year.\\u201d - Bruce T. Kenrick Jr.

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Links Mentioned

Bruce T. Ketrick Jr. - https://www.awt.org/

Bruce on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-ketrick-jr-cwt-9b11189/

Guardian CSC - https://guardiancsc.com/

AWT Convention - https://www.awt.org/annualconvention17/

AWT Webinars -\\xa0http://www.awt.org/education_events/webinars.cfm

Inc. Magazine - https://www.inc.com/

The Harvard Business Review - https://hbr.org/

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