Grateful for advice on new softener purchase (and other things)

[xiders]

Greetings! I am grateful for any advice or suggestions you may have to offer.

I am currently in the process of re-piping my house in preparation for adding two bathrooms upstairs. I'll be replacing our currently rented softener with a new non-rented one as part of the project.

When it's all said and done the house will have 3 bathrooms. Right now only two of us live here, although it will probably increase to 3 within the next few years. We're on a chlorinated municipal water source with 18GPG hardness and 1.6ppm Fe.

I'm planning on installing a sediment filter before the softener. Is it worthwhile to go with a 20" big blue filter instead of a 10"?

For the softener I'm currently thinking toward a 1.5 or 2.0 cuft. unit with 10% resin using a Fleck 2510SXT or an Autotrol Logix 268/760. I'm thinking 8lb/cuft for salt efficiency. Does that still work considering the iron?

One option I'm not sure about is whether it would be a benefit to add the Tannin Resin option. When the softener rental guy originally installed the unit we have now he had a tannin removal demo that hooked up to our kitchen faucet that did appear to remove the color in the water. Extra $100 though and I have no idea how to program the regeneration in that case.

I'm also going to be installing an RO unit. I'm undecided between a 4-stage unit and a 5-stage one. The only difference is an extra carbon block filter before the RO membrane on the 5-stage (and an extra $20).

I'm not committed to purchase from any particular place, so I'm open to recommendations there as well.

Thank you!

 

[Reach4]

I'm planning on installing a sediment filter before the softener. Is it worthwhile to go with a 20" big blue filter instead of a 10"?

I think so. It will either last twice as long or have half of the backpressure.

Consider a bypass arrangement, which I did not do, or at least keep a spare o-ring on hand as I do.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[xiders]

I think so. It will either last twice as long or have half of the backpressure.

Consider a bypass arrangement, which I did not do, or at least keep a spare o-ring on hand as I do.

I was leaning toward the larger one, thank you. And I will make sure to pick up a spare o-ring.

I am going to plumb in a bypass for both the filter and the softener.

 

[ditttohead]

Autotrol and Fleck are reversed on the inlet/outlet so take that into considerations on the plumbing. Do not use BB other than Pentek or Atlas Filtri. here are many online companies selling absolute garbage filter housings. Do you have a local company offering you a system? if so, excellent. I would avoid many of the online dealers as they focus heavily on the lowest cost parts. The system may have a good valve but junk internal parts. Most local guys wont risk that since you know how to get a hold of them and they want to remain in business for a long time.

 

[xiders]

Hmm. I hadn't contacted anyone locally, I was looking online. I was leaning toward a vendor located in Bartlett, IL calling themselves Quality Water For Less. They list their BB filter as a Hydronix HF45.

I'll call a few local vendors and see what I get. Thank you!

 

[ditttohead]

I don't usually recommend buying equipment from a UPS store.

 

[xiders]

... dammit. The address on their website is a UPS store. Well, not them then!