Water Filtration Explained - Eric Kurbanov on Clean Water and Smart Decisions

This is the beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Ross. Eric, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Sebastian. Hey, thanks for being here. Thanks for taking some time out of your busy day to hang out with me for a few minutes. I know that you and I connected through the great Dan Martell's elite coaching program. That is absolutely correct. Phenomenal community. Even better coach. I tell you, he's one of the best in the game. Yes, that's. This last coaching call was just amazing. I did not expect that at all. Yesterday's. Yesterday's correct. That was great with everybody showing up in town. I got a. I got a little bit of FOMO because I've made the trip out to Kelowna BC for two of his events last September. And being able to get in the same room with everybody, including Dan and the team, and everything is just. It's special. Kelowna is a beautiful place when it's warm. I can't relate. I can relate. Yes, absolutely. Well, you and I connected outside the group on Instagram and talking to you about what I do here, we help people launch podcasts. Been doing that for the past decade and say, well, I don't know much about podcasts, but if you need a water filter, let me know. And you know what? That. That one message got stuck in my head because I read some headline somewhere that 80% of my. The water we consume is chlorine, which is terrifying. And I just upgraded my shower head, spent a ludicrous amount of money on a shower head, but it's got a filter and it's got great pressure, so that was a good investment. And I thought. Eric talked to me about his water filter. Wait a second. So here we are. I invite. Wanted to invite you to be on the podcast. My. My water filter system is showing up today. I'm excited about that you sent me, so thanks so much for that. I've never been more excited. I'm always excited to guzzle tequila. Now I'm. Now I'm excited to guzzle some. Some reverse osmosis water on here. So I'll stay tuned on the water filter review on there, so. Oh, wow. So super excited for that one. Yeah, man. So I love telling people stories on this show, so I always like to go back for some context for our listeners. Go back to the beginning of the story. Now, the beginning's different for everybody, so you decide where the beginning is for you. But let's spend a few minutes bringing us back to the beginning of the story. Where did all of this start and what brought you to present day with what you're currently doing? Perfect. Yeah. Thank you so much. So growing up and I was born and raised in former Soviet Union republic called Uzbekistan. And once Soviet Union collapsed, and that's what when I was growing up in early 90s, and once the Soviet Union has collapsed, a lot of infrastructure throughout, a lot of cities have also kind of gone down the hill. So growing up in my early childhood, a lot of water that we take for granted today, we only gotten it in the morning for an hour, and then in the evening for an hour. And as time went on, even those times shrunk and eventually it became to the point to where we only got running water in the house for 30 minutes, 45 minutes a day in the evening, and that was it. So you had to do your showering, you had to do your washing, cooking, Whatever you need to do with water. That's a time frame you only have. So that's going back to my childhood. Fast forward into my early 20s. I barely, I didn't even turn 21 yet. It was like, like a week before I turned 21, I. I have bought my first home. And I was super excited. It had a pool in the back. It was my dream house at 20, not even 21 yet, so I couldn't even buy liquor yet. Super excited, we move in. And I discovered that this new house apparently came with a water system under the sink. And we started using it. And me like, I'm like, hey, that's cool. We're not buying bottled water anymore. So if as human beings we get used to good stuff really fast and it's really smooth and there's not much friction, you just start using it and like, oh, yeah, that's great. And then next thing you forget about it. So two years later, I've sold that house and I bought another house. This time around, it's in town, it's on city water. It's not on the well water anymore. Like the first one was. So I'm like, hey, great, you know, we're moving up in life here. We move in and there's no water system under the sink. And we're back to buying bottled water. I'm like, well, that's dumb. I'm spending so much money. Where do I get this system that I had in the other house that the builder put in, in this house? Because you can't drink it. Just like you mentioned, it's heavily chlorinated. The taste is just off. So I started doing research, called around a few local companies and all of them at that time, this is like 2007, 2008, they're like$900 thousand dollars to come in and put in the system. And I just like, well that's, that's crazy. I, I can't spend that money. So start doing my research, looking around, found out what the system was. It was a reverse osmosis system. Started looking for one where I could buy one. At that time, the Internet was just starting out and you know, the, the information like we have access now wasn't really that much of it and that easy to find. So finally I found a water system in Costco at our old places. I installed it for myself and I absolutely loved it. I'm like, hey man, I'm back in the game. So at that time I was working at the local quarry where we're drilling and excavating the dirt ground for all the homes that are being built and etc. And my crewmates, there's like five, six people on our crew. Every single one of them ended up buying a water system from me because it was such a great thing to have and they didn't have one. So that's how the idea was born. And I thought, you know what, maybe there's something to it. And here we are today. Incredible. And so, and how long ago was that? So the system that I, when I, when I started installing was 2008. 2000. They're probably around 2008. So you've been doing this wild long time now. Yes, very long time. So, and, and as I, I know you sent me one specific model that I, I don't know the differences, chat about the different products that you guys offer. Of course. Yeah. So what we do offer, we have started with the a countertop reverse osmosis Systems in, in 2011. That's when we introduced that one particular one that was very first system on the market and it addressed a very specific issue. All the reverse osmosis systems up to that point required an installation and somebody who is renting, you know, they obviously not able to put one in because most of the time landlord doesn't allow any modifications to the, to the plumbing system. So that countertop system, we still sell it today, it's called Zero installation Purifier. And just like a name suggests, it doesn't need to be installed, it doesn't need to be. There's no lines going into the faucet where you kind of screw in because everybody may have different faucets they all not. May not be standard, so you may not be able to. To connect and hook it up to it. So in 2011, that's what kind of marked a big step when we introduced the system to the market. And that solves the. The. The rental problem. And reverse osmosis. Reverse osmosis. No connections. Awesome. So we have two systems. We have zero installation purifier and upgraded version of it. And that's the one that you have gotten. It's. We launched it a couple years ago on Kickstarter. It was been. It has been very successful for us. How that is different? It has. Not only that it purifies water, it makes it nice and clean. It also has heating function. So you can get almost boiling water like 95 degrees Celsius or. Or very close to it. So you get hot water, it makes cold water. You get probably 10 to 12 ounces of cold water out of it at a time. It's not a lot, but for a small household, you know, you're getting one or two glasses out of it every, you know, 10, 20 minutes. It works great. So. And on top of that, it also does the hydrogen infusion as well. And there's been a lot. And I think that what might have caught your attention as well, it was. It definitely was. Because I. I have this Amazon special. You know, not a special. It's like an Amazon special, like a deal. Correct. And I bought for probably 20, 25 bucks, hydrogen glass bott morning, I put water in it and I push the button and three minutes later, you un. I take the top off and you could smell a difference. Like, it's weird that I say you could smell the hydrogen. It. But you can. And I know the capsules. That's where I first learned about it. My friend told me about these. These capsules are fantastic. Give you a little pep in your step every day. But I was like this. And so there's like 19 different of those bottles you can buy. So an Amazon special probably made in China. Who knows if it was really doing something? So when I saw that feature on here, I was like, ah. Because I almost bought it, I'm like, let me. Let me maybe upgrade this hydrogen water bottle. But then I saw that feature on the machine and I was like, look at that. Solving yet another issue. So hot water, cold water, reverse osmosis, and hydrogen. Now, is the hydrogen an option or does it automatically go in every time? Yes, sir. So the hydrogen is also an option. And there is a button for it where you can press it to disable it or enable it. I'm really excited about that. So, so do these things come with. So the filtration system, do they have to be replaced or how does that all work? Yeah. So recommended filter replacement is once a year on the municipal water supply. And the system will alert you when it's time to replace it. When you, when you do have it plugged in, there's also a way to, to turn off or disable the cooling function. So a lot of people, sometimes people are concerned about, oh, if I leave it plugged in at all times, will it consume a lot of electric? If you have the cooling function disabled, it will not. And you can also turn off the hydrogen function as well, save you a little bit more on electricity there. It's at the end of the day, it's very small. But you can also turn those functions off and leave it plugged in at all times. And once you do that, it will keep track of the filter replacement, has an internal timer that keeps track of the filter replacement timing. And the only reason why I bring it up is because we had very small amount of customers that would unplug it. It might be just a old habit. And when you do that, unfortunately it does lose its tracking ability of the filter replacement. So yeah, if you get a power outage like we do quite often in Florida with all the thunderstorms, every once in a while and it's for two, three hours, not a big deal. It's just you don't want to unplug it and only plug it in when you're using the system. Right. So that will mess up the filter counting. But beyond that, the counter will alert you when it's time to replace it. Very cool. So pretty much just thinks for you. Yes, sir. We also have an app and that connects to it. Oh, I did see that too. I'm glad you brought that up. What's that all about? It's so one of the biggest issues that I have discovered that people have with systems that are smart, that have the ability to keep track of all the, all your filters and let you know when I'm to replace it, is resetting the counter, resetting that filter replacement timer. Because the space on this water systems is limited, you have to use some creative ways to reset the timer. And it involves pressing one button, holding the second button down, and et cetera, et cetera. It's a tricky process and it's not only limited to our systems, it's industry in general because of the constraints of the space available on the systems. One way to overcome it, we made it super simple. You don't have to use the app if you don't want to. However, if you want your make your filter replacement super easy. You just go in the app, it connects automatically to your system, and with just one press of the button, your filter replacement counter is reset. So you don't have to go out and dig out the manual. You don't have to get on chat GPT and ask it, how do I reset this filter? Okay, none of that. You just go in. One press of the button and done. And it has a party trick feature. You can actually dispense water from your phone. So if you have guests over, you set a cup. Make sure you put a cup under it because it doesn't know. Yeah. All right. And you can trigger the water dispensing directly from your app. And possibilities are limitless once you have that. Yeah, absolutely. Very cool, man. Well, I can't be more excited to get my water. I've never. I mean, welcome to your 40s. You're excited about water filters, right? Yeah. Doesn't take much these days, folks, but fascinating piece of machinery you've created here. I can't wait to start tinkering around with mine and enjoying a better quality of water on here. But it's been great to learn how this all came about and I sure do appreciate you sending me one and us have an opportunity to have a conversation here on the podcast. And again, you know, thanks for your time. Any. Any final thoughts for our listeners on why they need clean water in their house? Yes, of course, I appreciate that question. Because we. We also do have whole home systems, and for people that own their home, not only drinking water, that's priority. That's always been priority, but also the water throughout your entire house, as we call a working water. Right. You mentioned the shower filter. So you can have filtered water throughout your entire home to where it protects your appliances. It. It also protects against chlorine, chloramines, and other disinfection byproducts that you may be showering in or bathing in. Right. And we have all those products. But people like, well, why do I need it? Why would I want something like that? And that's an education issue. So if you. Here's what I suggest. The first thing, what you got to do is you got to know what's in your water and what's in your local area, and then based on that, make a decision, see what you need. And easiest way to do it is to pull up your local water treatment report. And it's, it's basically one link. And if anybody who listening to it follow me on Instagram, my handle is at Eric 007 Eric 007 and send me a message report and what I'm going to do, I will know that you're coming from here and I will send you a link to a report where you can quickly and easily look up your local water quality and make a decision whether you need something for the whole house or you don't. There's certain cases there's, there's still very few places left in the United States where you don't have to have a robust system. So you don't want to make a huge investment. Investment into something where you don't actually need it. Yeah. And there may be other places where you may think that the water is great. I don't have an issue. When reality is when you look up on that report and there are contaminants that are 800 times, 1200 times maximum recommended level and you're showering in it, sometimes you may be brushing your teeth with it. So you, you just gotta know exactly what you're dealing with and that's the best way to do it. Love it. Those are great final thoughts on why you need filtered water in your life. Stay tuned. I'll be sure to include all of Eric's links, including the link. Check out the products as well. To get you. Get you a water filtration system for the house, for the office, both d, all the above. Eric. Thanks for your time, my brother. I appreciate it, man. Yes, sir. Until next time, friends. What's that? Happy to be here. Thank you. Yes. Happy to have you here, man. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the beyond the Story podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. Sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, launch Lab.com Studios. We'll talk to you next time.