Advice for new water softener

[dklawson]

I'm in the process of shopping for a new water softener system for my home. If some of the forum regulars could give some advice on sizing, I would greatly appreciate it!

Hardness: 344 mg/L (20.2 gpg)
Iron: 2.3 mg/L
Household: 5 people
Bathrooms: 2.5​

I tried using Gary Slusser's sizing calculator (thanks for leaving your site up, Gary!), which returned the following numbers:

Daily grain capacity needed: 8796
Total grain capacity needed: 70,368
Minimum cubic foot size: 4 cuft
​

If I understand this correctly, this means that I'll need a resin tank that holds 4.0 cuft of resin, and that a salt dose of 20 lbs (5 lbs salt / 4 cuft resin) will be the most efficient at 3640 grains / lb salt.

For that resin capacity, I think what I need is either a single tank 120,000 grain (4.0 cuft) or a dual tank 80,000 grain (5.0 cuft). Is this correct? And if so, which would be more appropriate in my case? (single vs dual)

Gary's page also mentions that if your iron level is 2.0 ppm or more (mine is 2.3), that I should consider running it at 3-4 day regeneration cycles, upgrading to SST-60 resin, and adding a turbulator distributor tube. Should I add these upgrades? If so, does this affect the resin tank size and salt dose that I need?

 

[Reach4]

You would be much better to have a separate iron filter first in line. That filter could also take care of other things, such as sulfur. So better water treatment and less work.

If you want to use the softener for that, you can do it. But there will be some extra cleaning involved. You can help by using iron remover salt http://www.mortonsalt.com/for-your-...ftening-salts/73/morton-rust-remover-pellets/

Gary's calculator is largely based on having the softener regen every 7 or 8 days based on your expected water use. The reason is that demand regeneration on a single tank system will leave up to a day of capacity on the table. Figure half a day on average. With 7 or more days between regens on average, that half a day is less consequential than if the softener were to regen every 3 days. Anyway, if you were going to have the softener do the iron removal and regen every 4 days, you could go to a smaller softener -- maybe as small as 2 cuft.

With the dual tank system, I don't know. It does leave nothing on the table if you are demand-driven. However would regenerating every 3 or 4 days be needed for each tank? I don't know. If so, that doesn't seem to be a good deal.

But if you went to a nice backwashing iron filter, that would let you get full capacity from your salt. A 3 cuft softener might last you 10 days between regens typically.

If you do not go with the backwashing iron filter initially, at least leave space for it as a future improvement. For discussions of extra maintenance for using the softener for iron removal, search for iron out salt in this forum.

 

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[ditttohead]

Install a properly sized iron reduction system ahead of the softener. You will have much better results with it. Using a softener for iron reduction is highly inefficient and is rarely considered an acceptable practice by most companies. It has been discussed in great detail in these forums many times.

Do you have any more information on your water? Did you get a real water test or just a very basic test? If you have a good test, please post the results. pH, silica, competing ions, etc can help us out if determining the correct course of action for your water quality improvement system.

As to your post, low salting and iron reduction do not mix. The SST-60 resin is unique, but it is not an acceptable replacement for a properly designed iron removal system. The turbulator is "neat" and it is slightly effective, but it is no substitution for removing the iron prior to the softener.

If you take the iron out of the equation, you will see that your system size falls into a more appropriate size for a residential application. A large 5 tf3 tank will not produce good results, especially under the low flow conditions that are common in residential applications.

 

[dklawson]

Thanks for the replies!

I hadn't anticipated installing an iron filter, so it looks like I have some more research to do this weekend. This is my first attempt at diy water treatment, so please bare with me as I climb the learning curve. With an iron filtration system lightening the load, would a 1.5 cuft tank be the right choice?

I do not have more than the basic water report for my home. I'll turn in a sample on Monday and hopefully have a better report back by later in the week.