Westside Water Store Weekly Update 🍃 + Minerals in the water

 

Hi Everyone,

I hope everyone had a great week and stayed hydrated.  Yesterday was Earth Day, hoping everyone did find time to go outside, take a break from their work week and enjoy the sunny second half of Earth Day.  🌎 I enjoyed seeing everyone that came through the store on Wednesday and shared their day's adventures with me.

I want to take a moment this week to talk a little more about the water you’re drinking from the Westside Water Store; because I get a great question all the time: “Do you add minerals to your water?”

The answer is no, we don’t add anything to the water.  Our store filter is not reverse osmosis.  The minerals in our water we serve to you, our customers, are naturally occurring, coming straight from the source. These include calcium, magnesium, and potassium, the same minerals your body already recognizes.

 

 

That brings me to one of the waters many of you come in for: our alkaline water. Our alkaline water has a higher pH than regular drinking water, typically between 8 and 9. But what really matters is how it gets there. We don’t use chemical additives or artificial processes to raise the pH. Instead, it’s those naturally occurring minerals that create that balance. 

And those minerals do more than just affect pH: They may help your body retain calcium more efficiently, support bone density, and improve hydration at a cellular level compared to neutral water. The store filtration system we use is not magic; its modern technology working on the modern water concerns we are hearing and reading about.  It’s the same point of entry for the whole house system we install in homes around the community.  We want minerals in our water and we don’t want various byproducts in our water.

 

If you haven’t tried our alkaline water yet, I invite you to come in and experience it for yourself. A lot of our regular customers notice the difference, and I always enjoy hearing your feedback.

At the store we have come to realize we are not only a water store that offers mineral rich drinking water to our community but we are also in the water vessel business and really have come to appreciate and enjoy that side of being a community water store, here is a line of crocks we have started carrying.  I haven’t figured out which design I like more.

 

As always, thank you for supporting the Westside Water Store. I appreciate each and every one of you. Thanks as always for being part of our community, and I look forward to seeing you soon.

And remember you, me and the water makes three, we are just getting started! ​😍

 

The Mission Behind the Water: Connecting the Dots

The Mission Behind the Water: Connecting the Dots

(Pure Way’s Whole Home Filtration Story)
Clean fresh water is universal, the path to want it is personal. Pure Way’s founder Owen Boyd
has a path to clean fresh water that is the definition of Steve Jobs’ “Connecting the Dots”
mantra: You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking
backward. As in, you can’t always see the river mouth at the headwaters but looking back after
river running, your personal water journey flows like a clean structured mountain stream if you
let it. Owen Boyd let it.


At the start, Owen was just doing the next right thing. He was learning, building and adjusting
while reacting to the world around him. Kind of like playing in the band, some folks trust to
reason others trust to might but we know it comes out right. — trust the process, keep your
water bottles open, and let the flow hydrate your journey.
Owen Boyd isn’t the person behind the counter at Westside Water Store filling 5 gallon jugs.
He’s nowhere near the Westside of Santa Cruz, he’s an innovator on the other side of the
country and the person behind the Pure Way whole home water filtration system, a national
brand in the residential water filtration space.


Westside Water Store wants to share his story with you because his standards line up with what
we care about at our store: clean, reliable water in your home, at an affordable price without the
drama of contracts and overly complicated filtration systems.

Tech + Law + Dental Labs with a splash of family health
(Precision that is focused on healthy choices)
On paper, Owen’s background can look like three distinctly different watersheds:
● Dental/medical labs (hands-on, real-world health stakes)
● Law (standards, accountability, how systems hold up under pressure)
● Computer science at Johns Hopkins (pattern recognition, optimization, obsessing
over what’s measurable)


From the headwaters, those streams don’t “match” but down at the river mouth, they connect
perfectly. Dental labs taught him what happens when details are ignored and someone’s health
is affected. Law sharpened his instincts to prove things, not just claim them. Tech trained him to
design systems that are precise, repeatable, and built to last.
Early in this journey life hit hard: his son was born missing a left hand, and Owen connected
that tragedy to mercury exposure linked to his wife’s dental work (amalgams) during
pregnancy. Not a blame game. Just a painful lesson and a reason to get serious about what
ends up in our personal bodies and in our shared environment.
So he did what he always does by connecting the dots and staying focused on his family’s
health, the environment around him and his natural instinct to solve a problem with a solution.

Problem to Solution

(Real-world health problems need shared solutions)
Before whole home filtration was even on his radar, Owen built dental/medical devices designed
to capture mercury waste so it wouldn’t end up in his family again or just as important
downstream in the ocean of life we all share.
He audited Stanford chemistry and cellular biology courses for a decade. Not for a
credential. For understanding. For dots that would matter later.


That’s the backbone of Pure Way and Westside Water Stores’ mindset: don’t guess, don’t hype,
don’t shortcut and build it right.


The Pure Way Whole Home Filtration Approach
Local water providers have very strict rules and standards to follow, this is meaningful to them,
to you and to me. We drink, prepare meals and bathe with the water they supply us. Westside
Water Store is grateful for this and the hard work they do to achieve this.
Owen’s lens is simple: for your home, you might want an extra layer — especially for things of
late people are reading and hearing about, like PFAS, chlorine, pharmaceuticals and volatile
organic compounds (VOCS).


The Pure Way whole-home system uses not just filtration but total system harmony in three
distinct stages to create this. Its NASA-derived nanofibers, built for high surface area and fine
filtration. It is a proprietary hi-flow/hi-capacity nano alumina anti-scale filter. It is a proprietary
microbiological nanoguard with agion silver and activated carbon filter. It is a custom catalytic
carbon block engineered filter for superior chemical reduction and clean tasting water. Most
importantly, it is for every tap in your home to be purified.


Key specs:
● removes 99.99% of contaminants
● whole-home protection (not just one faucet)
● no waste water, no electricity, no contracts

Where Westside Water Store fits in

Westside Water Store is your local hub for getting clean fresh water at the store or a
whole-home filtration system for your home. We will size the system correctly and install it
with a clear plan. We will help you match a system to your house, your water, and your goals —
no parade of jargon. We meet you where you are on your water journey.
And if you’re a refill-station regular, bring your containers and top off. We also carry stylish
water vessels (yes, the kind you actually want on your counter) because how you store water
matters too — purification is what you desire, and intention with purpose is how we do it.

Please Visit Us

Stop by and talk water—no pressure, just straightforward hydrating help.
Westside Water Store

Stop by and let’s talk water. 

Westside Water Store
1715 Mission St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Hours:
Monday – Saturday: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Sunday: Closed