Disconnect your garden hose; check your softener.

1. It’s getting cold. Disconnect your garden hoses. Frozen water in your garden hose can rupture a water line inside your home and create a mess.

2. If your softener is still set to 50+ grains of hardness you should turn it down. The hardness of our water is now 13 – 14 grains, thanks to Lewis & Clark. Prior to that, the hardness was more than 55 grains. We recommend you contact your local plumbing contractor or softener supplier to make sure that setting is correct for their household - turning down your softener to 13 for the hardness setting might be too low. There are conditions to consider such as volume of usage and the recharge frequency, which affect the lifespan of your softener. Here is a sample water softener manual (see p5).

3. We also now use the process of chloramination, which mainly affects dialysis patients and fish owners.

4. We are NOT on water restrictions. We ask you not to waste water, and at the same time you are welcome to use it for your needs without concern regarding restrictions.

Questions? see www.sheldoniowa.gov or call 712.324.4651 and ask for Todd Uhl, Dave Andringa or Sam Kooiker.