Do Sulfates Affect Water Softner?

[JulieG]

I am looking at getting a 40000 grain Fleck 5600 sxt.
I uploaded my cities water quality report to the company i am dealing with and they noted that the sulfates exceed the maximum limit and recommend that i upgrade my resin to sst-60 and adding a RO filtration system. Do I really need to do this or not??? my water tastes fine and smells fine, it just VERY hard (25 grains). We don't drink the water anyway.

 

[Bannerman]

SST-60 resin is a premium resin, sometimes specified for water containing iron. Since your water source is a municipal system, it will be chlorinated so any iron will be oxidized and will no longer be a concern although the chlorine maybe a concern.

Since your location is not yet showing, you could include a link to your city water report and also state your home's occupancy (to estimate water consumption). Do you utilize any high volume fixtures such as multi-head showers?

A 40K system equates to 1.25 cuft of resin. As your water contains a fair amount of hardness, you may wish to consider a larger softener, depending on your occupancy and water flow requirements. A larger system can often be more efficient in salt consumed and water used for regeneration as the regeneration frequency can be reduced.

Since you imply you're obtaining your drinking water elsewhere, you may want to consider an RO system for drinking and cooking.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[ditttohead]

Why would they recommend an upgrade to SST-60 for Sulfate??? Sulfates are reduced using an anion resin, sst-60 is a cation resin, it will have no affect on the sulfate. For the most part, sulfates can be ignored as long as you are using a good quality RO after the water treatment.

 

[JulieG]

Why would they recommend an upgrade to SST-60 for Sulfate??? Sulfates are reduced using an anion resin, sst-60 is a cation resin, it will have no affect on the sulfate. For the most part, sulfates can be ignored as long as you are using a good quality RO after the water treatment.

I tried to upload water report but it was too large. We are just two adults. I pulled out the last 2 years of water bills. We use between 500-600 cu ft monthly, 600 calculated out to 144 gallons per day. We have no special shower heads or anything else.

 

[Reach4]

I would opt for a 1.5 cuft softener or bigger, rather than a 1.25 cuft softener. Those would be a 54x10 tank vs a 44x10 tank respectively presuming that 10 inches of height difference is not a problem with your available space.

With your chlorinated water, you might benefit from 10% crosslinked resin.

SST is very good premium resin, but you don't have the conditions where that would be a big benefit. It is more salt-efficient. I have not tried to calculate a payoff time. One big advantage of SST would that you know what you are getting, because other resins look pretty similar I think. My comments are not based on experience.

For your use, I would not worry about a 350 mg/l sulfate number. That 250 spec is a secondary MCL and has to do with taste, from what I read. I wonder what sulfate tastes like in water. My sulfate is 134.

If you do get an RO unit, feed that with softened water. If you hook an ice maker to that line, use plastic -- not copper-- to feed the water to the ice maker.