Installed Whirlpool Water Softener

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Speaking of salt, Michigan where I'm from and lots of other northern states dump ton after ton of rock salt on the roads every time it snows enough to make the roads a little slippery. This is sodium in it's pure form. It's not a salt brine like a softener uses, it's rock salt by the ton. It eats cars, concrete and gets into the ground. For as long as they have been doing it, I have never tasted the first little bit of salt in well water. And where I grew up and drilled hundreds of wells, the average well depth was around 40' deep. So dumping softener salt into the ground is like a drop in the proverbial bucket. And living in Florida installing hundreds of softeners and dumping the backwash water onto the ground, i can attest to the fact that the grass loves it and I'm not tasting salt here either.
 
What I find strange is that there are jurisdictions that PROHIBIT you from putting it into your septic tank. I did not research to see if you can just dump it or if you are required to do something else silly (and costly) to remediate it.

Heck, I grew up in a time when grey water was just exited into the yard. Our washing machine discharge ran down the yard into an open ditch that went through every back yard on the block. Different times, huh?

re: Michigan. I grew up in Indiana before moving to Virginia. Our family vacations were spent at Muskegon State Park. We had a small trailer, and dad would park it for the season. I have great memories of those beautiful white dunes.

Dad caught a Northern Pike there that was about 4 feet long. When my mom passed away, we found about 50 prints of the picture of him holding it (black & white, of course). Must have been the largest fish the old man ever caught.
 
I got lost with my x-wife in Sleeping Bear Dunes right after our Prom. Never been so thirsty in my whole life. Then there was Silver Lake Dunes also along Lake Michigan where we used to take our Dune Buggies and 4 wheelers. Yeah, they had some pretty big Pike in those lakes.

Believe it or not, my 12 immigrant neighbors all dump their wash water on the ground next to my property. It stinks too. I'm trying to put an end to that. I won't say they are illegal because I don't know the few who aren't.
 
Man, that has GOT to create a major mosquito problem.

Call the government and tell them that a punch of Tea Party Patriots posing as Latinos have been handing out Constitutions and NOW they are dumping wash water near your property.

I guarantee same-day response.
 
Actually if I was mean enough; I could put on my ICE hat and just walk next door. The place would be vacated in minutes.
 
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.

No, I do not have the option of municipal water here, wish I did. So much easier and cheaper to treat. I am in an HOA with an ever watchful neighbor. WV and county code is very strict here regarding septic. Whether they will allow a grey water pit, I haven't checked on yet (it has to be a certain distance from the well and leach field). I know the builder frowned when I asked about one. Regulations he said.

As for waste water from an RO, the cleaner the water (filtered-treated) exposed to the diaphragm, the less waste water will be generated.
 
I misunderstood about municipal water being a choice. I misread your initial thread.

Funny, I never thought of softener discharge as grey water, since it is basically well water with salt added. But now I go back and read about it, I see I was wrong.

Interesting that liberal states like Connecticut and Rhode Island allow for surface discharge of the backwash, as long as you are 200 feet from the well (which makes no sense if the well is properly grouted, but that's another story). I know I researched codes in my Central Virginia county and surface discharge is OK. But we are sparsely populated, with the average lot size of 10 acres or so.

Sorry to hear you have an HOA with a sympathizer next door. If nothing else, you and everyone else in your development are in the same boat regarding your water/septic issues. So if this ever becomes an issue, at least you are all on the same side.

btw: As I was reading other sites about getting rid of softener discharge, I read a post from a guy who is remediating over 200 grains of hardness for a family of five!!! He is adding salt every few days. Can you imagine?
 
Are you sure it's 200 grains and not 200 mg/l? I have never seen any water with over 50 grains and with water like that, you need a dual tank model so it can switch over when one tank is depleted and that's generally more than once a day.
 
Are you sure it's 200 grains and not 200 mg/l? I have never seen any water with over 50 grains and with water like that...

Come on up, and bring some beer... :D

Calcium- 235.0 mg/L
Magnesium- 81.50 mg/L
Hardness- 920 mg/L
Total Dissolved Solids- 1300 mg/L
Sulfate- 820.1 mg/L

I believe they must have drilled over an old Indian burial ground. To top it all off, the land used to be an apple orchid so I also enjoy no creepy-crawly house critters... :cool:
 
Are you sure it's 200 grains and not 200 mg/l? I have never seen any water with over 50 grains and with water like that, you need a dual tank model so it can switch over when one tank is depleted and that's generally more than once a day.

I can't find the forum where I read that...I was all over the web reading on back-flush discharge. Others questioned his statement on how frequently he was replenishing the salt...literally buying it by the pallet.

If it we me, I might roll the dice on having a new well drilled and hope they hit a different aquifer. But I have no idea what his specific circumstances are.
 
Come on up, and bring some beer...

Calcium- 235.0 mg/L
Magnesium- 81.50 mg/L
Hardness- 920 mg/L
Total Dissolved Solids- 1300 mg/L
Sulfate- 820.1 mg/L
I'm trying to understand how they got 920 when the calcium and magnesium totaled up is only 316.5 which would be 18 grains hard. Eighteen is certainly hard, but not as hard as 920 would be at 54 grains hard.
 
I may be in a minority of plumbers who actually like to install Eco-Water manufactured water softeners like your Whirlpool, GE and Kenmore. The softener will bypass unsoftened water only during the regeneration process but the factory default regeneration time is 2 am. If you regularly use a lot of water at that time it is easy to change the regen time by following the instructions under the lid. I think you made a good Made in Minnesota choice and will be happy with the results.

So I have a whirlpool 33 also worked fine for 5 years. It will not draw brine and we've done/checked everything. Cleaned venturi (wasn't dirty)ordered a new gasket for it (the black rubber one), it had impressions on old one.no kinks, cracks or plugged ports. Tech came charged me $156 and he said he didn't know why it will not draw. All other modes work perfectly. Tech said only thing I might want to do is order the seal kit which I did today $40. Could that be it or did I just spend $ for nothing?Any thoughts or suggestions what else to check? Culligan wants $2500 for new system which I don't have :( I could buy another whes33 ($661+at Lowes) and install ourselves as plumbing will be the same but not sure if we should. I am on a well if that means anything.
 
What I find strange is that there are jurisdictions that PROHIBIT you from putting it into your septic tank. I did not research to see if you can just dump it or if you are required to do something else silly (and costly) to remediate it.

Heck, I grew up in a time when grey water was just exited into the yard. Our washing machine discharge ran down the yard into an open ditch that went through every back yard on the block. Different times, huh?

re: Michigan. I grew up in Indiana before moving to Virginia. Our family vacations were spent at Muskegon State Park. We had a small trailer, and dad would park it for the season. I have great memories of those beautiful white dunes.

Dad caught a Northern Pike there that was about 4 feet long. When my mom passed away, we found about 50 prints of the picture of him holding it (black & white, of course). Must have been the largest fish the old man ever caught.
This has to do with oversaturating your tank and drain field.
 

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