Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
(OP)
I live in a rural area with a well-based water supply. The water is extremely hard and I'm told I'm already into the best aquifer in the area.
We get gray-white reside in the toilets, baths, and showers, organge staining on the shower heads, sacle-like reside in the glasses.
I installed a SEARS water softener but, frankly, I don't like the time and effort it takes to operate it.
I would like something more "low maintenance". I have read about the magnetic systems but am still unsure as to whether or not they are a scam. I know little about the effectiveness of reverse osmosis systems.
Can anyone give me advice as to which direction they think I should go?
Thanks...Brian "Ned" Kelly
We get gray-white reside in the toilets, baths, and showers, organge staining on the shower heads, sacle-like reside in the glasses.
I installed a SEARS water softener but, frankly, I don't like the time and effort it takes to operate it.
I would like something more "low maintenance". I have read about the magnetic systems but am still unsure as to whether or not they are a scam. I know little about the effectiveness of reverse osmosis systems.
Can anyone give me advice as to which direction they think I should go?
Thanks...Brian "Ned" Kelly





RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
One other alternative for hardness is polyphosphates. They are injected into the water with a metering pump (like a chlorine pump). The don't remove anything but they bind hardness, iron and manganese into a different chemical form to prevent scaling, coloring, etc. They won't stay stable in hot water heaters. They are NSF approved, although I personally would be a little leary of drinking them in my water for the rest of my life. However, only a tiny fraction of most water supplies are actually used for drinking.
Do a web search for reverse osmosis systems, you will get lots of hits. I could be wrong, but I don't believe they work for hardness.
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
As for an RO system, you probably would not want to use that for the whole house. Typically, you have to send roughly 4 gallons of water down the drain to produce 1 gallon of good water. The reason is that the RO membrane will plug prematurely otherwise. It is great for drinking water, and does take a lot of things out of the water (minerals that cause many stains and residues), but there is a type of hardness that only a water softener can effect (i.e. ion exchange with calcium bicarbonate). This is a whole field of study. There is an organization called the Water Quality Association (WQA) and their website www.wqa.org may lead you to some answers you want as well.
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
Maybe manganese is your problem. Iron, too. You'd need, for example, an iron or green sand filter to remove iron .. zeolite softeners don't do that - they just replace calcium and magnesium for sodium (hence, regeneration with sodim chloride salt is intermittently required).
Reverse osmosis would likley work very well, giving very soft water, also free of other contaminants. As above, there is large reject flow .. but in the treated product water, calcium carbonates etc, essentially all hardness, would be removed.
A detailed water analysis would help define your problem.
Wayne//
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
Scaling amy be either due to presence of Complex Calsium and Magnesium salts.But My suggestin to you would be to get your water sample checked first and then install any kind of filter or treatment plant.
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
Another thing is what you want to use treated water for: drinking only or to protect your entire plumbing system. NSA gives good results in small comsuption. They had a bigger systems for households but I had no chance to check them.
Zozon
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?
Although it is not a poison (it's used to make sour taste in beverages / syrup), it's not recommended to drink the treated water since all contaminant is still dissolved in the water.
If your water source contains higher calcium or iron, you can increase the dosage up to 200 ppm (it's taste a little sour already)
The treated water is slightly corrosive, but it stops scaling and coloration.
Regards,
wiwie
RE: Best Method for Residential Water Treament ?