diggity
Member
Well, I thought it was interesting anyway... This may come as no surprise to you folks with lots of experience, but I figured I'd post it anyway as a breadcrumb trail for any other DIY'ers like myself:
So after 12 years of living with lousy water, we finally decided to shell out some money and fix it. I decided to DIY it, not so much because I'm cheap (although I really am), but moreover because we did talk to a few local guys and none of them were really even interested in talking seriously about a real solution, probably because our water is so bad. They mostly just shook their heads and walked away, so to speak. We thought about drilling a new well, but of course there's no guarantee that the new well would be any better. So I decided to DIY it. Our water is very acidic (ph 5.25) and very high in iron (15-20 ppm), hardness (50 grains) and TDS (nearly 1500 ppm). Fortunately, it's totally fine as far as serious health risk contaminants go (arsenic, coliform, etc). It's all just nuisance components. We have a big softener, which removes most of the iron and hardness, but "most" isn't good enough when it comes to iron, and we still get staining pretty much constantly. The water tastes horrible, so we have an RO unit on the kitchen sink.
Anyway, I wanted to take the project in stages:
1) Correct the pH
2) Install new Katalox Light iron filter
3) Re-bed our existing Kinetico sediment filter
4) Re-bed our existing Kinetico softener
Pausing for a few days between stages, to observe how each change affects the water.
So I recently completed step 1, which was to raise the pH. At first, I thought it would simply be a matter of putting more calcite in our existing calcite upflow filter. But that did nothing. Really, nothing. A $50 bag of calcite was a total waste of money, as the pH barely budged. I knew I could switch to a calcite/corosex blend, but that would raise the hardness even further, so instead I bought a soda ash injection system. Since the old calcite filter wasn't up to the task, I decided to use it as a contact tank, so I emptied all the calcite and sand out of it. This was not easy because it was extremely heavy, but I managed to get it outside, where I could hose it out inside. Then I plumbed the injector in before the tank. So the water comes in from the well and the first thing it hits is the soda ash injector, then the contact tank, then on to the rest of the system. It was easy to plumb the injector in using a Sharkbite t-fitting and adapter. Wiring it to the pressure tank switch was a little trickier, but I figured it out. Really though, it's probably best to hire an electrician if you have any question at all about how to wire the Stenner pump into your pressure switch.
Anyway, here is my surprise: Injecting soda ash to raise the pH has improved overall water quality much more than I expected! The system has been running for a couple of weeks now and our water has never been this good. Our pH is right around 7 now. Taste has improved dramatically (although we still only drink from the RO), and my wife has gone for 2 weeks without having to clean the rust off the tubs and toilets! What's most surprising is that the TDS has gone down too... from almost 1500 ppm to around 1250 ppm. Somehow, adding more "stuff" to the water (in the form of soda ash) has actually DECREASED the concentration of "stuff" in the water. I have to assume that some of the TDS minerals/salts were kept in solution ONLY because the pH was so low. And that raising the pH has caused some of that junk to precipitate out. Our old sediment filter must be removing the precipitated TDS junk.
So this is my big thumbs-up for soda ash injection. So far so good! Now on to step 2 - installing the new KL filter. Our water is so bad that I was wondering if a single KL tank would be enough to oxidize all that iron by itself. But considering how much our water quality has improved already with the soda ash, I have renewed hope that we will some day have decent water!
So after 12 years of living with lousy water, we finally decided to shell out some money and fix it. I decided to DIY it, not so much because I'm cheap (although I really am), but moreover because we did talk to a few local guys and none of them were really even interested in talking seriously about a real solution, probably because our water is so bad. They mostly just shook their heads and walked away, so to speak. We thought about drilling a new well, but of course there's no guarantee that the new well would be any better. So I decided to DIY it. Our water is very acidic (ph 5.25) and very high in iron (15-20 ppm), hardness (50 grains) and TDS (nearly 1500 ppm). Fortunately, it's totally fine as far as serious health risk contaminants go (arsenic, coliform, etc). It's all just nuisance components. We have a big softener, which removes most of the iron and hardness, but "most" isn't good enough when it comes to iron, and we still get staining pretty much constantly. The water tastes horrible, so we have an RO unit on the kitchen sink.
Anyway, I wanted to take the project in stages:
1) Correct the pH
2) Install new Katalox Light iron filter
3) Re-bed our existing Kinetico sediment filter
4) Re-bed our existing Kinetico softener
Pausing for a few days between stages, to observe how each change affects the water.
So I recently completed step 1, which was to raise the pH. At first, I thought it would simply be a matter of putting more calcite in our existing calcite upflow filter. But that did nothing. Really, nothing. A $50 bag of calcite was a total waste of money, as the pH barely budged. I knew I could switch to a calcite/corosex blend, but that would raise the hardness even further, so instead I bought a soda ash injection system. Since the old calcite filter wasn't up to the task, I decided to use it as a contact tank, so I emptied all the calcite and sand out of it. This was not easy because it was extremely heavy, but I managed to get it outside, where I could hose it out inside. Then I plumbed the injector in before the tank. So the water comes in from the well and the first thing it hits is the soda ash injector, then the contact tank, then on to the rest of the system. It was easy to plumb the injector in using a Sharkbite t-fitting and adapter. Wiring it to the pressure tank switch was a little trickier, but I figured it out. Really though, it's probably best to hire an electrician if you have any question at all about how to wire the Stenner pump into your pressure switch.
Anyway, here is my surprise: Injecting soda ash to raise the pH has improved overall water quality much more than I expected! The system has been running for a couple of weeks now and our water has never been this good. Our pH is right around 7 now. Taste has improved dramatically (although we still only drink from the RO), and my wife has gone for 2 weeks without having to clean the rust off the tubs and toilets! What's most surprising is that the TDS has gone down too... from almost 1500 ppm to around 1250 ppm. Somehow, adding more "stuff" to the water (in the form of soda ash) has actually DECREASED the concentration of "stuff" in the water. I have to assume that some of the TDS minerals/salts were kept in solution ONLY because the pH was so low. And that raising the pH has caused some of that junk to precipitate out. Our old sediment filter must be removing the precipitated TDS junk.
So this is my big thumbs-up for soda ash injection. So far so good! Now on to step 2 - installing the new KL filter. Our water is so bad that I was wondering if a single KL tank would be enough to oxidize all that iron by itself. But considering how much our water quality has improved already with the soda ash, I have renewed hope that we will some day have decent water!
