Regen drainage as a grass killer

[bingow]

Rural setting, on a well, with gravel driveway leading up to our detached garage. It's the garage approach and entrance area where we have an ugly weed and grass infestation. We do not use commercial weed/grass killers, mostly for wildlife concerns. Nearest tree is 40' away and slightly uphill. So, I'm looking at collecting softener regeneration waste drainage from our WS-1 twin tank's 60 minute brining cycle. It's a slow discharge (roughly a third to half gallon per minute?) and I'd like to collect 5-10 gallons in buckets (easy, in my drain setup) which I'd use as a spray. I know from taste that at the beginning of the brining cycle, the waste drainage is extremely salty and reminds me of sea water.

My question is about the salt concentration at the beginning of the hour long brining cycle as opposed at the end, as a % salinity. Can anyone
point me to a source other than going by a subjective taste test? Or how to measure it myself? Chemistry was my worst subject....

 

[Jeff H Young]

salinity meter

 

[Sponsor]

 

[bingow]

Thanks, will look at Ebay. Was lazily hoping some study had been done somewhere and that data existed.

 

[LLigetfa]

Do a manual regen, capture the stream in buckets, and pour it on the problem weeds. That should give you some idea of efficacy. Mind you, long term salination of the ground has a cumulative effect that is harder to quantify.

I have an extra brine tank from an old softener that I use to store the mush from the bottom of my brine tank. I add muriatic acid to it and use the mixture to kill unwanted vegetation. I had thought of trying to automatically capture the outflow from just the brining stage but have not devised a way to do it.

Rock salt used for ice melter is cheap enough to spread on gravel to control vegetation so it's not worth the effort to capture the softener brine.

 

[Jeff H Young]

Well yuou can just put it down and hope it works its basicaly free weed killer

 

[bingow]

Thank you LLigetfa and Jeff H Young. I promise not to overthink this minor problem on this valuable forum. I'll stick to the taste method. I should have mentioned that I already know from our original crude softener drain method, it killed two 6" diameter Juniper trees, dead and gone; and a large swath of grass that took ten years to recover. Our current method is to pipe the softener waste water underground to the septic leach field, bypassing the septic tank. That was 10 years ago, and we've seen no problems.

Thanks again.

 

[LLigetfa]

I already know from our original crude softener drain method, it killed two 6" diameter Juniper trees, dead and gone; and a large swath of grass that took ten years to recover.

Both my softener and iron filter discharge into a ditch on my property along with my sump pump (perimeter drain). As long as there is adequate rain to dilute it, neither the trees nor the grasses are affected. It is only when we have a drought that it has killed trees. My thought to sequester and capture some of the chloride was more to save the trees than to save money.

 

[LLigetfa]

I had thought of trying to automatically capture the outflow from just the brining stage but have not devised a way to do it.

One thought was to sample the drain for conductivity and then actuate a solenoid valve.

 

[bingow]

One thought was to sample the drain for conductivity and then actuate a solenoid valve.

OK you are after a hands-off sophisticated sampling method. Neat. Mine is dumb mechanical: the softener drain tube has a snug fit into an air gap, mounted waist high, allowing the drain tube to be pulled out and put in buckets. If I can get 10 gallons of strong stuff per regen, I'll not need to do it very often. And, being twin tank, that offers some daytime regens vs middle of the night.

My next test will be to collect several 1 gallon samples throughout the brining cycle, and compare their strength (by taste, I suppose). I have a TDS meter that may offer a rough idea? There is some discussion on the web about doing that, with a lot of disagreement if a plain vanilla TDS meter would help.

 

[LLigetfa]

My softener regen is somewhat unpredictable since it meters water usage and follows usage trends.