Water Softeners

[CincyGTS]

Anyone have any recommendations?

My current city water is slightly acidic (6.5 pH) and probably about average for hardness (50 ppm or 3 grains), note, the cities water supposedly contains some sodium to soften it a bit as people used to have problems with pinhole's in their pipes.

What I'm looking for is a whole house water softener to raise the pH and decrease the accompanying hardness that standard methods of raising the pH will cause.

I don't have any other water problems that I know of; I do plan on putting a reverse osmosis unit in for the kitchen sink and running a line for the water/ice dispenser in a new refrigerator.

 

[Big John]

We put a water softner in when we moved into our house 6 years ago..It's not the 300 job at Sears,this is an honest to goodness industrial type unit that we paid 1200 bucks installed and uses (potassium chloride?)I can't for the life of me remember what it is but it isn't salt,to take the hardness out.It has performed flawlessly for 6 years.Just a little side note and I'm sure you know,hard water tends to eat away copper piping,so you are heading in the right direction.If you want the brand name of mine I will look when I go home,just say the word..

As far as the reverse osmosis water thing,don't know anything about it but sounds hokey to me..What could the possible benefits be???

 

[CincyGTS]

Reverse osmosis is great for drinking water, all units that i've seen aren't able to produce enough water for a whole house. Removes a ton of contaminates, great for drinking/cooking water.

The potassium stuff is better than the sodium, heard that from a number of sources but couldn't get a real reason why. I will probably be laying down quite a chunk for a unit (>$1000) easy and probably quite a bit more.

If you remember the name let me know. Also, how much do you spend per year to keep the unit running in material, how many people in your home?, do you water your lawn as well?; all are important factors in determining the amount of material used.

I haven't really gotten a ball-park figure for how much it's going to cost to run (negating electric).

quote:

---

Originally posted by Big John:
We put a water softner in when we moved into our house 6 years ago..It's not the 300 job at Sears,this is an honest to goodness industrial type unit that we paid 1200 bucks installed and uses (potassium chloride?)I can't for the life of me remember what it is but it isn't salt,to take the hardness out.It has performed flawlessly for 6 years.Just a little side note and I'm sure you know,hard water tends to eat away copper piping,so you are heading in the right direction.If you want the brand name of mine I will look when I go home,just say the word..

As far as the reverse osmosis water thing,don't know anything about it but sounds hokey to me..What could the possible benefits be???

---

 

[oldman]

You can also try to contact a water supply company, Crystal Water, Culligian, Sparkletts, or others who install the water units also. I know that people in our area that have wells are required to have water purification units by code. Home Depot sells Mortons for water softeners. My wife tells me that soft water is better for cleaning clothes and better for your hair and makes the soap and shampoo last longer.

 

[Razl]

quote:

---

In any modern water softener the hardness is removed by filtration/deposition onto resin beads, not by adding salt to the water.

---

Tree Hugger brings up one of the shortfalls of most water softeners. It's nice to have a timer that regenerates the resin beads at 3am, but the time interval may be wrong. The need regenerate is determined by the concentration of hardness in the water and the volume of that water passing through the softener, not time. So you could be cleaning too often or not enough. Both scenarios are less than ideal. Other softeners do measure flow, and trigger a cleaning when that threshold is reached. However, if this is during an active time in your home, you run the risk of running bypassed (unsoftened) water.

I have a Kinetico system in my house. What I love about it is the smart design. It uses two resin tanks so when one needs regenerating, the other one kicks in so you always have soft water. In addition, it is using the softened water from the good tank to clean and regenerate the dirty tank, not untreated hard water. In addition, the unit is completely mechanical and driven by gears using the flow of water trough the system. This means you are not running any electrical circuitry in a high humidity environment. I've been told that most failures to the water softener systems is corrosion in the electrical system.

I think I paid around $2,000 but am very satisfied with it for the past 5 years. No problems. I heard Culligan is very good, but tends to be expensive too. The installer told me to avoid Sears models altogether. My 2 cents.

 

[labman]

The result of conventional water softeners is replacing what ever ions may be in the water with sodium or chloride ions. Use a potassium based recharge, and you end up with potassium in place of the calcium instead of sodium. Conventional medical thinking is that potassium is better for you health.

Reverse osmosis removes most of the ions leaving little calcium, sodium, or potassium.

Real soap plus calcium ions gives insoluble scum. Calcium compounds ten to deposit on pipes, maybe worst on galvanized, then copper. They also build up in hot water heaters shortening their life. One of the best things for a hot water heater is to drain a gallon or 2 of water out the bottom every month. Deposits sometimes break loose and get caught elsewhere. They are the sludge of your water system.

I have bought 2 houses that had a Sears water softener, and they were both a piece of junk.

 

[tmorris1]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Razl:

quote:

---

In any modern water softener the hardness is removed by filtration/deposition onto resin beads, not by adding salt to the water.

---

Tree Hugger brings up one of the shortfalls of most water softeners. It's nice to have a timer that regenerates the resin beads at 3am, but the time interval may be wrong. The need regenerate is determined by the concentration of hardness in the water and the volume of that water passing through the softener, not time. So you could be cleaning too often or not enough. Both scenarios are less than ideal. Other softeners do measure flow, and trigger a cleaning when that threshold is reached. However, if this is during an active time in your home, you run the risk of running bypassed (unsoftened) water.
....

---

Most metered water softeners will wait until 2AM (or some set time) to recharge once they have used enough water to trigger the recharge. Example: Mine is set for 600 or 700 gallons. If I hit the 700 gallon mark at noon, it will recharge at 2AM that night.
As for sodium in the water, if your softener does a good job of rinsing during it recharge cycle, there is only a small amount of sodium that gets in your water. It won't kill you. We have a seperate hard water tap for drinking anyway because soft water sucks for drinking.

 

[Tree Hugger]

quote:

---

Originally posted by tmorris1:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Razl:

quote:

---

In any modern water softener the hardness is removed by filtration/deposition onto resin beads, not by adding salt to the water.

---

Tree Hugger brings up one of the shortfalls of most water softeners. It's nice to have a timer that regenerates the resin beads at 3am, but the time interval may be wrong. The need regenerate is determined by the concentration of hardness in the water and the volume of that water passing through the softener, not time. So you could be cleaning too often or not enough. Both scenarios are less than ideal. Other softeners do measure flow, and trigger a cleaning when that threshold is reached. However, if this is during an active time in your home, you run the risk of running bypassed (unsoftened) water.
....

---

Most metered water softeners will wait until 2AM (or some set time) to recharge once they have used enough water to trigger the recharge. Example: Mine is set for 600 or 700 gallons. If I hit the 700 gallon mark at noon, it will recharge at 2AM that night.
As for sodium in the water, if your softener does a good job of rinsing during it recharge cycle, there is only a small amount of sodium that gets in your water. It won't kill you. We have a seperate hard water tap for drinking anyway because soft water sucks for drinking.

---

Just shows it takes all types..

I can drink no more than about 10 oz of straight city water, and that with a sour expression on my face and a nasty taste in my mouth. I can drink the softened water until I stop being thirsty... And don't get me started about the effect of hard water on the flavor of tea and coffee! Yecchh!

 

[Al]

quote:

---

Originally posted by tmorris1:

Originally posted by Razl:
[qb]

if your softener does a good job of rinsing during it recharge cycle, there is only a small amount of sodium that gets in your water. It won't kill you. We have a seperate hard water tap for drinking anyway because soft water sucks for drinking.

---

Its really not a matter of rinsing until the sodium is gone. The sodium displaces the calcium on the resin bc of its higher concentration (during backwash). Then in the normal operating mode the Calcium displaces the sodium ion and the sodium is rejected into water for household use. I'm willing to be corrrected but I don't think chemistry changed that much in the last few years

We have a place that sells Reverse Osmosis water for 25 cents per gallon. Once a week during our other errands we stop and fill our jugs in 5 to 10 minutes. We use RO water for out coffee, tea, cooking and drinking. A teapot will last for ever with RO water.

 

[Tree Hugger]

In any modern water softener the hardness is removed by filtration/deposition onto resin beads, not by adding salt to the water.
The salt is used to periodically clean the deposits off the resin beads so that they can 'start again'. While the beads are being flushed with brine, the water feed to the house is by-passing the water softener, which is why it is normally set to occur at about 3 am.
So it really doesn't make any difference to the quality of your water whether you clean the beads with common salt (sodium chloride) or expensive salt (potassium chloride), except you get ripped off financially if someone persuades you to use the more expensive substitute...
And you get no added salt in your water, either way.
The reverse osmosis filter is exactly the same process that Coca Cola use to produce their AQUAFINA brand of bottled water, and you will not be able to taste any difference in the resultant water (except that sme people can detect a very slight 'plastic' flavor from the bottle in the AQUAFINA branded water...).

HTH