Installed Whirlpool Water Softener

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Ok.. I just got my hardness water test from Hatch.. I got 12 gpg of hardness.. I still don't know how much iron my water has.. I think the norm is about 0.03mg/l?..

What is the formula to calculate that into the mix.. I know the 12 gpg x 17.1 = 205.2, but what about the iron?
 
Ok.. I just got my hardness water test from Hatch.. I got 12 gpg of hardness.. I still don't know how much iron my water has.. I think the norm is about 0.03mg/l?..

What is the formula to calculate that into the mix.. I know the 12 gpg x 17.1 = 205.2, but what about the iron?

Here is a link to the Whirlpool page where the downloadable manuals are (I think you have on of these units). Each unit has its own manual that will tell you how to program that specific unit to remediate various levels of iron, but you gotta know how much iron you have in the first place, just as you needed to know how much hardness you wish to remediate.

I was going to direct you to the test kits you can buy at Amazon or at Lowe's so you could get started on addressing this, but I know nothing about their accuracy...and the online reviews for them are all over the place.

Perhaps someone on this forum or your local plumbing supply house might have an iron test kit they can recommend while you pursue that complete test through the university.
 
There are several rules of thumb on how many grains of hardness to add per 1ppm of iron. My calculations and my test's on my own water over the years at different homes tell me that softeners are not iron filters.
 
Wow, I'm jealous already. 50 acres and here I am with only 5.5.

[snip]

I got very lucky when I moved to this area.

My employer (outside of D.C.) was forcing people to work from home so they could get out from under expensive leases. So when they did that, many of us took advantage and headed for the hills. And at the time, my boss was in an office about 50 miles away, anyway.

The place I bought was owned by an investor, who had been sitting on it for a while and was looking to get out from under it. The house had been let go by the prior owners. Apparently the guy tried selling it as a land-only deal, and when he couldn't he had the house fixed up. That's when I snagged it.

The 51 acres consist of 7 cleared acres and 44 overgrown acres (clear-cut and not replanted). I'm well off the paved road and surrounded by farms of 300-600 acres. It's perfect for me. As I often say, I'm not anti-social, I just don't like people :D...at least, I don't like them ALL the time, just in small quantities.

So the story of your wells sounds like others I have heard. I do not look forward to the day my well may need to be replaced. The thought of paying someone to drill useless holes in the ground with no end in sight does NOT appeal to me.

I had mentioned that the county did not get the driller's report when the current well was installed 25 years ago, but I DID track down the name of the guy who drilled it. I need to get hold of him while he's still above ground to see if he might have details on it.
 
Yup, I'm really jealous. That's always been my dream, however it's not my wives.

Don't worry about having to replace your well. Most areas in the US except in the mountains and a few odd places are easy to find plenty of water for a home. The depth may vary, but that's geology. I do have one piece of advice. If you have the option, look for a Driller who still drills using the cable tool method. Stay away from Rotaries. Not all but plenty of rotary drillers go too deep with a rotary because of the overhead. They are much faster, but when I can go out and buy an old beat up cable tool rig for $6000.00 and fix it up for a few bucks and some sweat. A rotary runs up towards half a million dollars once properly outfitted with a water truck, tools etc etc.
 
Yup, I'm really jealous. That's always been my dream, however it's not my wives.

This made me smile. I hear it from lots of guys. Yeh, I'm single. Too much alone time is bad for anyone, but the tolerable limits seem to vary by gender.

I think most women need to be raised in the rural (semi-isolated) life in order to tolerate it as adults, while many men seem to be repelled by even moderately crowded conditions and could never fathom living in an urban setting.

I knew a young guy who said that he wanted to get married at some point specifically because he knew how he would live his life as a single male. Both funny and insightful, all at the same time.

Interesting advice on the drilling method. I'll have to "Google" that to see what it's all about.
 
I think your right about the gender thing. My Wife had a terrible time after we moved to Florida. She missed her friends, her family and she felt all alone. That was then. Holy crap, I created a monster, now she has a million girlfriends, we see more of her family now than ever when we all lived in Michigan. We are the Florida vacation with free room and board. But at least, she is like me in one way, you couldn't drag her back to Michigan.
 
As an aside, not long after I moved in, my county and the state university ag center extension co-sponsored a reduced-cost water testing.

Other than the hardness issue, the only two numbers that were above the mid point were Total Dissolved Solids (349mg/l) and salt (18mg/l).

TDS max is 500 ppm, so that's not too bad. That amount of salt is a non issue.

Please read this article- http://www.budgetwater.com/drinking-soft-water/ in its' entirety.

The EPA maximum contaminant level (MCL) states that the maximum sodium allowed in water is 150 PPM. PPM (parts per million) and MGL (milligrams per liter) are the same. Many states and organizations are now passing laws or are considering state laws limiting sodium to far lower amounts. We (the author of the URL) think anything over 20-30 PPM or MGL is too high.

Accelerated sodium levels (and potassium chloride is also a salt) is not good for humans and other living things (including vegetation that absorbs this excess salt from your leach field).

As for filters, cartridge or tank, either you use them or use your body as a filter. You size them according to the function they are intended to correct.

A water softener is not designed to be an iron filter. Excess iron/manganese/sulfur must be treated before the actual softener system.
 
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When I first tried to condition my well water (and being a city boy a$$-u-me ing all water was good - spring water was clean when I was a kid), it didn't take too long for the resultant iron stains and calcium buildup.

I found a filtering system that worked great but was hesitant adding a softener because of increased sodium intake and the backwash sodium content backwash hitting the septic tank. Now I know ($$$) that for my level of hardness (53GPG), a salt softener is the only option.

You know, it's funny. I remember the builder standing there and telling me how great it will be not having to pay for municipal water and sewer. It would have been cheaper at twice the price... :(
 
That article is very deceiving. Even though I agree with some of his verbiage, his math is terrible. He's taking hardness, turning it into MG/l then telling you that is the amount of sodium you're drinking. Your drinking one glass of water, not a gallon or so. Hardness is measured in grains per gallon, not per glass of water. If you have 15 grains of hardness and you have a softener, your one glass of water will have less sodium in it than a slice of white bread.

I'm not sure what his angle is, but at first I thought he was going to tell you his unit doesn't use salt. But he didn't, he even bad mouthed Potassium chloride. I'm really not sure where this guy is coming from.
 
Now I know ($$$) that for my level of hardness (53GPG), a salt softener is the only option
You do have an expensive water problem. I assume you have a twin tank unit because one wouldn't supply enough soft water for one day. Do you own any stock in Morton?:confused:
 
I have a customer who has water like yours. He has the twin tank and buys his salt by the pallet.
 
Before I installed my softener I read tons of articles, mostly to see what my technology options were. I don’t have a lot of room in my house and was searching for the smallest solution (in terms of physical size) that I could find that would remove the minerals from my water, not just suspend them. I had mixed feelings about removing the minerals because I knew I was eliminating many of the health benefits of drinking well water, but the minerals really kicked up my existing kidney stone issue. (There is research stating that hard water will not give you kidney stones, but says nothing about what it may do if you already have the condition). Only a salt-based system actually removes the minerals.

The article you linked to is only one of two articles I have seen that talks about the increased sodium content of water in alarming terms. As Speedbump pointed out, nearly every other article out there says that the increased sodium is not an issue, and they frequently put it in terms of other food items: 8 ounces of softened water has the same amount of sodium as a slice of bread or as a bowl of cereal.

I also read a lot about discharging the softener into my septic system or directly onto my lawn and found opinions all over the place. The one article that made the most sense to me said that the true risk from putting salt into the septic tank was not that it would kill the critters (it won’t), it’s that the salt may add buoyancy to the water and cause the solids to rise from the bottom (or to not settle properly in the first place)…they had tested this, I believe in a state university lab somewhere.

The opinions about discharging softeners onto lawns also seem to be all over the place, with a few people claiming that their grass actually grew taller and thicker from it, possibly due to the minerals carried with the discharge. So I ran the softener discharge (along with the a/c condensate discharge) into the corrugated pipe that carries downspout discharge away from the house to the wooded area at the edge of my yard. If I did not have that wooded area, I would have just run the discharge to some discreet part of the yard rather than put it into the septic tank or let it loose near my foundation.

You mentioned reverse osmosis in a prior comment. Doesn’t R.O. waste something like 10 gallons of water for every gallon output? If you are softening 55 grains of hardness and THEN losing a bunch of it through the R.O. process, that has GOT to be expensive.

I AM NOT A PLUMBER, so this is just the opinion of some stranger with an internet connection….You now have all that extra softener discharge volume + sodium + R.O. discharge volume going into your septic system. If you haven’t already, have you considered discharging these onto a porous surface somewhere? I don’t believe that any but maybe a few counties would regulate this, since it’s not even grey water. And you ARE in West Virginia. :D

Regarding the cost of your water…I’ve read a few comments on this forum from people who are paying for municipal water and STILL paying out of pocket to remediate quality issues. I mentioned that my rural county has failed more than one quality test, and the county I just left (one of the top 5 richest in the nation) pumps their system full of chlorine. So take some comfort in the fact that you can’t be certain that your true cost gap and inconvenience issues are as large as you think it might be.
 
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Very well said. The person with real issues is KULTUTZ with over 40 grains of hardness. I have had one well with 44 grains and I know what he is going through. Lots of salt is what he is going through.

Ro is a whole different story. If you have salt water in your well like people in a little pocket here in my town, you install a whole house RO. This well will also have hardness, iron and possibly sulfur. Before the water goes to the RO, it goes through a softener and an iron filter. Otherwise you would plug the membrane in record time. RO's do take out salt and practically anything else with the exception of PCB's. Problem is, the PH is lowered and the water has no taste. I don't want to drink that stuff, but you wouldn't believe how many people have one under their sink for no other reason than cooking and drinking. Then they forget to change out the pre and post filter along with the membrane every six months or so and are now drinking water that spits out blobs of trapped junk every so often. Yuck!

People have been programmed to believe their tap water is contaminated with everything from PCB to arsenic. Filter companies are getting rich on this hysteria. The problem is, these inline filters don't remove any of this stuff. All chemicals go right through them. A carbon filter if used properly with a one gallon flow rate might remove some chemicals, but only for a short period of time.

Anybody want to buy a magnetic water softener that uses no salt?
 
Regarding the cost of your water…I’ve read a few comments on this forum from people who are paying for municipal water and STILL paying out of pocket to remediate quality issues. I mentioned that my rural county has failed more than one quality test, and the county I just left (one of the top 5 richest in the nation) pumps their system full of chlorine. So take some comfort in the fact that you can’t be certain that your true cost gap and inconvenience issues are as large as you think it might be.

I failed to mention that I also have migrated to here from Rockville, MD and their highly touted water quality is terrible. Sediment ruined more than one WH and of course it had to be filtered to drink (chlorine).

I too am concerned about backwash being discharged into the tank. Main reason I tried to employ a water conditioner (and no backwash filters) was to avoid this. I am thinking of having the discharge(s) routed to a grey well, if legal here. Otherwise it will have to go to the tank with more periodic pumping.

As for fear of what comes out of the pump, you do not know until the well is PROFESSIONALLY TESTED. It is just as simple as that. You then choose system(s) to correct whatever problem(s) you have.

You need to do a more thorough research on RO before making a final decision. I (personally) would never knowingly drink from an unknown water source or a brine tank.

It is simple as this, if you do not treat/filter the water, then your body becomes the filter. I guess then as you urinate, the tank will still receive the backwash... :D
 
Man, lots of us are escaping the rat race. Good for you! I left Vienna (Fairfax County) after having lived there since 1963. All of a sudden there were people around me who had ridden a gravy train that I never knew existed, and they would basically run you over with it. It used to be such a nice place to live. As you know, that's what living so close to the seat of government will do to an area. But I sold a house I bought in the mid 70s (a "knock-down" bungalow), so at least I benefited a little.

I agree about having water tested...and not just for coliforms. That link you provided is to a company selling--among other things--R.O. systems. I noticed that one of them only wastes 1.5 gallons for every gallon of drinkable output. Interesting how things have changed.

Regarding routing your system discharge. Since you had the option of having municipal water, I can assume you are not in the sticks, hence your concern over the regs. Unless you are in a densely populated area or have a HOA, I cannot imagine there being any regulations over it.

This conversation has me rereading articles on this. Connecticut says you can discharge on the surface but they do not recommend doing so "to prevent inadvertent exposure of people and animals to the discharge." :eek: Maybe I'll drop their Department of Tourism a note asking them exactly how toxic the state believes salt water to be, because I may have to change my Connecticut shore vacation plans! I reread one article that discussed bypassing the septic tank and plumbing the discharge right to the distribution box. And some areas make it ILLEGAL to run the discharge into the septic system!

You do a lot of research, so you've probably already come across WVU's environmental services center: http://www.nesc.wvu.edu/ Lots of interesting data there on wells, septic systems, etc.
 

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