• Folks, if you've recently upgraded or renewed your annual club membership but it's still not active, please reach out to the BOD or a moderator. The PayPal system has a slight bug which it doesn't allow it to activate the account on it's own.

Anyone install/have info on Water Softener?

Hawkeye

Hawkeye

We've been in the new house for almost a year and the water is just terrible when compared with tap in manhattan. It appears to be very very hard with mineral residue.

Would like to know if anyone out there went ahead and procured a water softener (e.g. from Home Depot).

Are these things complicated to install? Should I get some contractors? How often do those beads have to be replaced?

Finally does one hook up the RO/DI directly to the water softner?
 
C

Carlo

Pickup a hardness test available at your LFS or at HD/Lowes near the house RO systems and the softeners. You could even take a sample of your tap water to a pool store and have them check the hardness for you. This way you can see how hard the water actually is and be able to size the unit accordingly. You could find you don't have a hardness problem at all but unlikely. Pretty easy for most people to tell by the soap lather in the shower thing and the way your hair feels (all the minerals in the water).

If I remember correctly the HD/Lowes style tests will also check a couple of other things. You can rule out iron and I think a couple of other metals which could also be the problem but not as likely in which case the softener wouldn't be effective.

Pretty much all water softeners work the same. The differences is in the "head" and things like timing of the backflush. Some can be set to only come on every two days, every 3 days plus each day on the weekend (figuring more use), and some of the more advanced one monitor the water and backflush on demand. Honestly the advanced features aren't needed for most homes. The average home is fine doing a backflush every couple/few days. Hard water is easy to feel especially in the shower and you'll know/figure out the adjustment intervals quickly (IE 2 days instead of 4 days).

So pretty much any softener will work. The HD/Lowes brands are fine but check the warranty. Most manufactures have a different warranty for stuff sold through HD/Lowes. While it could be a brand name and you are used to calling the manufacture directly and having them send a guy out to the house while it's under warranty this usually doesn't apply to the HD/Lowes branded versions and you need to unhook and take the unit back to them for service. Trade off of price. Fortunately with a water softener you don't need to take the whole thing back but only the "head" 99% of the time. You'll not likely have a problem with a unit but I thought I'd mention this warranty issue. It's worth asking about to make sure you understand the warranty you are getting.

If you have ever done plumbing work before it shouldn't be hard to install yourself. There isn't much to be done in the way of plumbing. If you haven't done this before maybe ask a friend, relative or neighbor for help. Having to get a contractor out to do the job could double the cost. Some of the little tricky things you will want to take into consideration are things like outside faucets and sprinkler. Do you want them to use softened water or normal water? If you use them to water the grass you won't want to use the softened water. But if you have a sprinkler system (make sure to bypass the softener) you'll probably want the hoses to use the softened water (washing car, windows, etc). So sprinklers and outside faucets are really the only things you'll want to take into consideration to figure out where to install the softener in line or what to bypass. If you have multiple house faucets you could run one as softened water and the others not softened for use cleaning outside windows and the car, etc...

The softeners use salt crystals. You can buy 50lb bags at HD/Lowes for about $4 if memory serves me correctly. You don't change it but add it to the big "chamber" when ever it gets low.

You WILL WANT the ro/di unit to come after the softener. Or put another way you want to feed the RO/DI unit softened water. Your TDS numbers will be lower from the start and your DI resin will last longer.

Hope this helped,
Carlo
 
C

Carlo

No problem.

So do you think you are able to do the plumbing yourself? If not I bet you could get help from the crew here at the club. Somebody probably lives close enough to you that could give you a hand with this when you're ready.

Carlo
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top