What I Learned About Electrodes and Electrolysis Chambers

OK, this is a big topic. It will probably be modified a lot as I clarify more and more.

You know how some people in Enagic teach that 'bigger is better"? "More power" is the refrain heard in the lobby of Enagic's HQ more often than Tim the Tool Time guy ever said. If you were taught by some people, you believe that the only way to get "deep" ionization that creates "hexagonal" clusters is to use more power!

BS. Mostly. OK, partially true - there is a relationship between plate surface area and power in what I will be referring to as "old technology" which dates back to 1989. And old technology is what everyone in the water ionizer selling pool is using in one form or another.

That pool is crowded with all the different water ionizer manufacturers and marketers pointing fingers at each other, stabbing each other in the back, and shouting "My tool is bigger than your tool," and turbocharging their power delivery, surface area, number of plates and so on.

In the other pool, there's just one. It's innovative and pioneering, thinking outside of the electrolysis chamber box. It's not even a plate. It has no membranes. It has nothing to collect scale and mineral deposits. It is recyclable and affordably replaceable (all ionizer plates have to be replaced at some point ... depends on how much you use them, how much you clean them and how hard your water is.)

Here are some of the indisputable facts about electrodes in the old technology pool:

• The electrolysis chamber is made of a series of solid or mesh titanium alloy plates coated with varying degrees and purity of platinum. You will find 3, 5, 7, or 9 plate machines. In between each electrode plate is a mesh that separates the alkaline and acid water.

• Solid plates, like the ones used by Enagic, are what we call "1G" technology, or first generation. They've been around, pretty much unchanged, since 1989.

• Mesh plates are what we call "2G" technology having been introduced a couple of years ago by Jupiter and Tyent, and perhaps some other brands of ionizers. They use less precious metals because they are much thinner, and have slits cut in the plates that increase the surface area for ionization.

• The problem with mesh plates is that they just don't hold up. Brand new out of the box, the ionizers appear to work very well, but 6 months of use, especially in a hard water area, you get different results. If you have the guts to void your warranty and look inside, it will gross you out. Scale accumulation, wearing away of the platinum coating, and burning of the plates from the electricity is common.

• Another issue with mesh plates is that the platinum coating is not reaching the inside of the slits, thus exposing titanium alloy to the water. I don't know about you, but I don't want cadmium, lead, nickle or other metals in my water or in my body.

• To be fair, plate wear is also a problem for solid plate ionizers, even Enagic. Is anyone willing to open up 1 year old SD 501s and inspect the plates? Since we own three of them, we are planning to do that with a metallurgical lab manager and see what we find. We know that plates wear, the question is, how fast? And how do you know? By the time your pH or ORP results have been affected, you've been drinking titanium alloy-contaminated water for awhile.

• You can, of course, replace a worn plate or an entire electrolysis chamber. Replacing individual plates won't break the bank, and Enagic does have the benefit of being able to open up the chamber to inspect and replace plates. Others are designed to replace the entire chamber. To do that typically runs nearly $1000 for the 5-7 plate machines.

• Cleaning is also an issue. When Enagic first started marketing in the US, the rule was to clean with citric acid once or twice a year, and now and then send your machine in for deep cleaning at the US office. Now they recommend running 1-3 gallons of Beauty Water (5.5 pH where the charge to the plates is reversed) daily, cleaning twice a month, and yearly deep cleaning. All that cleaning will reduce the life of the plates. On the other hand, the totally automatic cleaning process touted by Jupiter relies on frequent charge reversal, and that, too, is known to create a lot of wear and tear on the platinum coating.

• Do you have iron in your water? Then you better have a good ion-exchange pre-filter because iron will rust and create a mess in your electrodes.

• Finally, don't mess around about changing your internal carbon filter sooner rather than later. Chlorine MUST be removed from source water before ionization because chlorine reacts with platinum and will shorten the life of the plates. If your tap water is high in chlorine, you will probably need to change your internal filter more often than recommended, or use a KDF pre-filter.

To close, we know plates lose their platinum, exposing titanium, over time. But how do you know when? You have to test your water with pH drops and an ORP meter to see any decline in performance. Do most people do that? I don't know about you, but most people I sold machines to forgot that they should run Beauty Water daily and clean the machine even once a year. And I know they didn't buy an ORP meter.

So how does "3G" technology compare? Well, you have just one electrode - a disk - and no membranes. Nothing to clog up with scale. One moving part instead of several valves and motors. And the smart technology modifies the delivery of power depending upon the TDS or hardness of the water, so less scale is created in hard water areas. Should you have to replace the electrode, that cost will be well below $300. And I've already said that it performs as well, if not better, than the SD501 from Enagic.

It's a no brainer, right? That's what we thought, and that's what a lot of other now XEs thought. Sorry, Enagic. You might have built a better mousetrap in the 90s, but technology does not stand still. The trend is always more for less.

You snooze, you lose.

No Logic Here!

I apologize up front that this blog is not going be very logical in its progression. I'll write about whatever I think about at the time, or what I uncover in my paper piles and computer files. If you want more information about the new technology I am referring to, the best thing to do is email me and I'll answer your question or hand you off to another expert. You'll find my email at the top of the page.

It's been an amazing week ... for the first time in the history of our career selling ionizers, we had meetings attended by 20+ people and 6 people bought this new machine and became distributors! We don't live in Southern California where this apparently is typical ... we are in a small community of less than 100,000.

It's not a surprise, really. We have informally surveyed all of our 100+ distributors and the downlines of many of our associates within Enagic from all over North America (Canada included). We found that about 65% felt very stuck, and believed that the price point was the major stumbling block for them to make this a profitable venture. When asked if they would market a machine that retailed for half the price if they could confirm that it produced the same outstanding results as the SD501, 100% said yes. 

Really? Even 6A2s and more? They would give up those amazing bonuses that you can retire on? (sarcasm here)  You betcha. Why? It's a lot easier to sell an affordable machine. And that leads to more healthy, happy people which leads to .... tah dah ... selling more machines!

I'll just talk about my experience as an example. Only 5 people out of 100 ever made just one sale. So there was no residual income. And residual income is important if you want to leverage your efforts and build something lasting that can support your family and leave a legacy for future generations.

In a future post, I'll talk more about that and about the myths promoted by certain Enagic leadership that MLMs and Binarys and all that are no good. Folks, they're real good when they're done right, when the products are outstanding and there's a variety to choose from. And while I appreciate the elegance and uniqueness of the Enagic comp plan, it has its downside ... that being the fact that your upline gets the lions share for a long time for doing nothing. Yes, they are supposed to support you, train you, educate you, help you close, do three-ways, hold meetings, and keep you informed of important information, but the reality is, most don't. So distributors who are successful get there on their own because they are persistent, tenacious, enthusiastic ... or they have a big downline that they flip from another MLM. (and then they flip to another, and another, and another ....)

'Nuf said. Bye for now.

What the Heck Are You Doing???

"Are you crazy?" my friend asked me when I told her that I was fed up with the politics, leadership and management of Enagic and had decided to promote a brand new, innovative, next generation technology water ionizer. "What the heck are you doing?" she wailed, tears in her eyes, looking like a deer in the headlights. She was the first person I sold a SD501 to that actually turned it into a part time business, so she was invested, so to speak.

"Didn't you just make 6A? Didn't you just reach the pinnacle of the comp plan?" Well, not exactly. The pinnacle no longer really exists, I explained. Just one of many reasons for this decision. 

"They changed the comp plan last year," I told her. And that's a story in itself, I chuckled to myself. I'll have to tell you about it some time. "No retirement ... you have to sell 15 machines per quarter DIRECT to get the bonuses, and those are now a pittance compared to what they told us," I explained. "And they don't kick in until I reach 6A2 or something, and by the time I get there, they'll probably change it again." [If you are a 6A2 reading this, I don't have to tell you how much you've been screwed, and you know that you and those at your position are truly peeved right now. Am I right? You can comment below.]

"But, but, but .... I thought you would NEVER sell anything else because of the outstanding quality and results you and others were getting .... what happened????"

Ah, there's the rub, I thought. Yes, I BELIEVED with all my heart the stories about the highly touted platinum coated titanium plates in the engine of the SD501 ... the electrolysis chamber. And they are mostly true, although ALL water ionizers on the market until just recently have serious problems with plate deterioration, scale and rusting. Most definitely, the SD 501 stands up extremely well to the mesh plate ionizers that present the most direct competition. But what I had learned in over a year of investigation and journalistic research had educated me about the history of ionized water, who made what, and what the differences were. And what I learned at first shocked me, angered me, and deeply disappointed me about Enagic and its founder, Mr. O.

So it took a long time, and the decision to leave this behind was not made impulsively. But providentially, I was recently in the right place at the right time to evaluate some innovative smart technology before it was actually introduced to the world. I was able to see that a water ionizer could in fact produce identical if not better results (in terms of what we can physically measure - pH, -ORP, surface tension, free hydrogen and those amazing bubbles) and be sold at a retail price of half that of the SD501 with an extremely generous distributor compensation plan.

And once I saw what I saw ... tried the water as they say ... for a month, I simply could not ethically or morally sell another SD501. And once I made that decision, it opened the door of my mind to allow me to dig deeper, ask more questions, and learn more about how the wool was pulled over my eyes (and yours if you are an Enagic distributor.)

So I started this blog to share what I have learned, and what I will learn in the future as I continue to uncover stinking piles of doodoo left behind by Enagic leadership spinning the myth of the 'superior' Japanese technology to support the mark-up that pays the distributor network to sell machines. Darn it, I loved that comp plan! It made sense! I defended it wholeheartedly. And gosh darnit, I worked very hard for that money ... spent hours educating my prospects, holding their hands, installing their machines, following up ... and losing at least one sale for every one I made to the competition and their lies (yes, they definitely do lie as well or better than Enagic top leaders, but some of what they say is actually true.)

And then having to teach my customers how to read inscrutable instructions on how to CLEAN the machine ... not every 6 months like we were told when I started, but EVERY OTHER WEEK if they lived in hard water areas (which means more than half of North America.) And sending it in to be 'deep cleaned' once a year - not just if I didn't follow the cleaning instructions. Oh, and finding out that most people who bought a machine (not from me, of course) were never told to run 5.5 pH beauty water for 3-5 minutes a day. 

And finally, dealing with the inscrutable and impossible to understand Japanese customer service and tech department who could never explain to me why I was NOT getting a decent -ORP where I lived and how to fix that problem.

One thing I have learned is this: All ionizers on the market ... solid plate or mesh ... have one thing in common. They don't do well in hard water. And they REALLY hate iron ... it rusts and destroys the ability to make -ORP water. Is iron common in the US? You betcha. So that superior Japanese technology was not so superior after all ... but wasn't it better than 'the competition?'

Depends. If it's mesh plate, yes. I'll talk more about that in another entry. But guess what? Enagic's mythical founder Mr. O owns a bunch of companies and he goes to great lengths to obscure or obfuscate that fact ... and he has been selling essentially THE SAME ionizer through these companies IN THE US for some time. It all busted open last year when Enagic distributors were solicited by US importers for Sanastech. Sanastech is Enagic's parent company ... it's on their corporate history page on the web site. And more recently when we learned that Amega [the Zero Point Energy wand start-up (read: Chinese fire drill) MLM that costs 4 to 8 times more than identical wands bought elsewhere on the internet ;-)] was importing 5 plate ionizers made by Toyo Tech owned by ..... tah dah .... Mr. O.

"Fed up are you," Yoda said, with a smile. Yep, fed up. (Yoda is what I call the wise voice in my head.) But I had dedicated my life to this pursuit and it paid the bills. So back to the question:

What the Heck Are You Doing?

The answer has many parts, many subtle layers of flavor, many stories of intrigue, and most of all a story of technological innovation and quality improvement. So I'll stop this first post now - it's dinner time - and come back to the history of this monumental decision in a bit.

I'd love your comments. But be reasonable - I can moderate you. We don't need to be nasty to one another. We might be working on the same team in this new company some day ;-).