Please help with acid neutralizer questions

[turboaccess]

We have a 4 bed/2bath house. We did have a fleck 5600 which is now broken and the tank leaked. I called around locally and of the two companies, one said I would need a 2.5 tank with the clack head with calcite only. He measured the ph to be 6.0. The other company suggested a CSI Signature 2.5 with mixed media. Our water has been tested and the only problem is the low ph. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks, Vickie

 

[turboaccess]

Also, the other company measured the ph to be 5.5 so we are confused as to which type of system we would need.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[ditttohead]

The 2.5 Clack with Calcite would probably be a good solution to your problem. This large of a tank may increase your hardness to an undesirable level so a softener may be desirable after the Calcite system. I recommend staying away from the mixed media systems since media repairs and changeouts become much more complex and possibly costly. The 2.5 Cu ft. system is rated up to 5.6 GPM. You may do fine with a smaller calcite filter. What size was the old unit and was it nuetralizing ok?

 

[Gary Slusser]

Also, the other company measured the ph to be 5.5 so we are confused as to which type of system we would need.

I've done a lot of acid neutralizing and you better have a very large gpm and hp pump or there is no possibility of correctly backwashing a 2 cuft let alone a 2.5 cuft AN filter. A 1.5cuft would work well.

And if the pH is 5.5 (less than 6.0), you can not expect to raise the pH to 7.0 without a mixed bed, and if you don't get it up to 7.0, the water is still acidic but as much as 5.5 or 6.0.

To know what your pH is, you'll have to have another test done. I suggest you buy an aquarium or pool pH test kit and test it yourself. And don't aerate the water when you collect the sample; trickle the water slowly and no splashing.

 

[turboaccess]

Thanks for your quick suggestions. The tank that was in there was 48" x 9". I don't know if it was getting the proper ph as it was in when we got the house. Our well is 10.4 gpm and is approx. 800 ft from house down a slope with 1" pipe. I will do as suggested and test the water myself and report back. Agreed that we need a backwash system. Are any tanks better than the others such as the vortec tank? I've read the other posts on ph neutralizers and am leaning toward ordering online except for the question of whether we need the mixed media or not. The clack estimate with calcite and a 2.5 cuft tank was close $2000 and the other CSI system was $950. Quite a difference. Online prices seem much better if we can figure out exactly what we'd need but we'd like to be pretty sure we could get the ph up to a good level. Will get the test kit this weekend and do the testing ourselves and see if we can come up with a fairly accurate ph range. Thanks again.

 

[ditttohead]

I like Gary's suggestion of the 1.5 Cu. Ft. For 95% of applications, it will work fine. The 2.5 is technically correct, but in the real world, unless you are constantly running two showers, and the laudry at the same time, the 1.5 Cu. Ft. system will serve you just fine. If you buy it online, get the 7000SXT, the WS1 is generally not available online. I am not a fan of mixed media systems. Some medias dissolve faster than others, and keeping the mix correct is difficult. A calcite system is very easy to maintain. Remove the valve, add some calcite to a certain height in the tank, and you are done. You can also get tanks with fill ports on the dome of the tanks, but I find these to be more of a bother than simply removing the valve.

The Vortech tank... awesome but... probably not worth the extra money, and a standard tank will work just as well.