Thoughts on treating this water

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Alternety

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Attached are the test results from my well. There are two sets of numbers. The column labeled raw is the water directly from the well. The other column is water that has been in a storage tank for a prolonged period and has been run through a 0.04 micron filter. Earlier tests trying to identify what the small particles in the water were determined that both the iron and manganese appeared to be bound to the clay.

The well is 3 GPM, the pressure pump can do 20 GPM.

My objective is to make things as simple as I can and avoid adding chlorine if at all possible.

From the test results, my interpretation is that there are only two things that need to be treated - TDS and arsenic. I will take the arsenic out of a separate drinking water system with RO. I would like to get it out of all the water because it will be used to irrigate food plants.

The TDS is not directly harmful, but it leaves spots when water evaporates. I would really like to get rid of that.

Any suggestions/comments?




Test Max Units Test Result Test Result
Raw Wilkes U Filtered Wilkes U
pH 6.5 - 8.5 pH units 8.18 7.8
pH 6.5 - 8.6 pH units 8.3 (exposed to air - 48hr)
Conductivity umhos/cm 492 407
Alkalinity mg CaCO3 161 180
Total Hardness mg CaCO3 50 49
Ca Hardness mg CaCO3 45 31
Chloride mg/L 38 39
Sulfate mg/L 30 29
Nitrate + Nitrite mg/L 0.05 0.5
Orthophosphate mg/L NR NR
Turbidity 3.9 (reddish) 0.1
Turbidity (0.45 micron filter) 0.1
TDS mg/L 295 280
TON (odor number) unitless 0 0
Saturation Index unitless -0.1 -0.4
Copper (first flush)
Copper (after flushing) 0.05 0.014
Iron (total) 0.48 0.02
Manganese (total) 0.12 0.004
Zinc (first flush) <0.05 0.005
Calcium see hardness 12
Magnesium see hardness 4.6
Sodium 80 88
Potassium 1.1 1.3
 

Bob NH

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The usual way to take out TDS is RO or some other "desalting" type process. It can't be removed by any "filter" because it is dissolved.

I don't see the arsenic number in the list but the current EPA standard is 10 micrograms per liter (0.010 mg/l). RO should reduce that to acceptable levels.

If you have life problems with the 0.04 micron filter you might want to use a pre-filter.
 

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Thanks rancher. I don't know how to get the dissolved solids out in high volume either. I was hoping someone knew how.

I believe that the EPA changed Arsenic to <0.005.

The filter is doing fine. It has either a stainless steel filter inside or one of carbon. It flushes each night so it stays reasonably clean.
 

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Bob, the total hardness is only 49 and of that calcium is 31 (If I am reading the test results properly), which is already pretty soft I believe. If you are thinking water softener, I want to get rid of these things, not change the composition of the molecules. I think I am looking more for a deionizer with resins for both cations and anions. Do you know of home scale units for this sort of thing? Such a device would need to deal with whole house flow and I think I would need to put it after my filter to protect the resin bed. That will get me cleaned up for household water. It may even make an RO system for drinking unnecessary.

I would also like to get bulk water cleaned up but that would need to be before the filter. I don't want to run all of the irrigation water through the filter. Two issues; throughput of the filter, and "wear and tear" on the filter. I actually don't know exactly what increased use means to the filter membrane. Something I ought to look into. My system splits before the filter with one large pipe going outside to feed irrigation.

If you have any suggestions, of it I am interpreting something wrong, please let me know.
 

Speedbump

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If you mean 48 grains, thats hard as a brick. If you mean PPM then it's practically soft. I'm no expert on a complete water analysis, but Gary is, and he would be the one to answer your questions.

I do know that you can't use a softener or any other filter for irrigation purposes. They just don't have a large enough flow rate to handle that much water.

bob...
 

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Sorry, I just realized that although I had spent a rather large amount of time getting the columns on my post readable, the board software collapsed everything I did to a bunch of characters at the left of the post.

The units for everything from Alkalinity thru TDS is mg/L
 
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