The first hour of installing a K1

A K1 install runs about an hour, end to end, with two people. The first quarter of that is unboxing and positioning. The middle is plumbing and electrical. The last bit is calibration and the first pour. Here's how it actually goes.

0:00 — 0:15. Unbox and position.

The K1 ships in a 1.4m × 0.6m × 1.0m wooden crate. Two people, no forklift needed if you can roll it on the included furniture dolly. The unit goes on a slab floor or a load-rated commercial counter — total weight, full of water, is 84kg. We've had one installer try to put one on a hollow-core particleboard counter. It cracked in three days. Don't.

Catch #1: the back-clearance spec is non-negotiable. We need 80mm clear behind the unit for ventilation and the drain elbow. Most architects draw the K1 flush against a wall on plans. It can't be. Walk the install site before delivery and confirm the clearance.

0:15 — 0:35. Water in.

The K1 needs ¼" cold supply, 30-100 psi, with a shutoff valve within 1m. We ship the John Guest fittings; you provide the line. If you're tapping off an existing chiller line, you need to confirm the chiller has the GPM headroom — some commercial fridges put out 1.2 GPM max, and that's the minimum the K1 wants under load.

Catch #2: TDS of the source water matters more than you think. Above 400 ppm TDS, the filtration cartridge life drops from 6 months to 2-3. We can configure for this, but only if we know in advance. Test the water before delivery. A $20 TDS pen is enough.

0:35 — 0:50. Power and network.

100-240V, 6A. Standard kettle plug. Networking: ethernet preferred, dual-band wifi as fallback. The K1 phones home for OTA updates and pushes telemetry every 60 seconds; if the network blocks outbound 443 to *.aquivio.com, the unit will work locally but no dashboards.

Catch #3: corporate networks frequently MITM TLS and our cert pinning will refuse to talk to the proxy. Get the network team's buy-in before installation, not after. Adding our cert to the proxy allowlist is a 5-minute job for IT but a multi-day procurement nightmare if you don't have the contact.

0:50 — 1:00. Calibration and first pour.

The unit auto-purges, runs an internal pH/ORP self-test, and calibrates the dispense pump. About 7 minutes. The first pour comes out clear at pH 8.5-ish, ORP -350mV-ish. Hold a clean glass under the spout, hit the touchscreen, taste it. If it tastes weird, something is off — usually source water TDS, occasionally a loose fitting on the alkaliser cell.

Catch #4: the first 10 liters get poured down the drain. They're chemically clean but they have residual factory test water mixed in. We tell installers this, but it gets forgotten. Those first ten liters go in a bucket, get poured into the floor drain, and the eleventh is the one you serve.

That's it. One hour, two people, four catches that account for ~80% of the support tickets we get on day one.