Well water help / advice needed

[waterborne]

We moved into a new house in upstate NY and have a well which has shown some past bacteria on water tests. We got the latest water test back with the following results:

Hardness: 15.91 gpg as CaCO3
Ph: 7.26
Iron: 0 ppm as Fe
Manganese: 0 ppm as Mn
Tannin: 0 ppm/tannic acid
TDS: 325 ppm
Color: 0 pcu
Suspended Matter: None
Iron Bacteria: None
Rust: None
Odor: Very Light Musty / Mildew / Moldy

We were planning on adding a whole home filter along with UV treatment but are trying to figure out what to do to treat the hardness. The house has 3 full bathrooms and 1 half bath for a family of 4 all serviced by a 50 gallon hybrid hot water heater. The water hardness which has caused visible buildup on all of the fixtures, but we haven't noticed any issues with soap lathering, etc.. Since we're only in the house 2-3 months for the summer and here a week at a time throughout the rest of the year we didn't want to put something in that we would need to maintain constantly. My wife's parents had a salt water softener and was more interested in a salt-free treatment to avoid having to add salt to the system.

I understand from a bit of research that the salt-free treatment doesn't actually reduce the water hardness, but helps prevent the mineral buildup in the pipes and fixtures. Can anyone offer any suggestions on why we shouldn't go the salt-free route with the information above or would it make sense? Thank you!

 

[waterborne]

Bump... any other information that I need to provide that may help with suggestions? Thanks again!

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Reach4]

does not make sense to me, but I don't care to expand on that at the moment. -- well maybe a little one. There is no test that can distinguish between water that has gone through a TAC saltless thing and water that has not.

I would go with a regular softener with 2 cuft of resin. However a softener needs to be protected from freezing while it has water in it. You can winterize plumbing to not need heating, but I don't think you can do that with a softener.

I would tend away from UV myself, but it is not nonsense. A deep well is not going to have pathogenic bacteria, unless it is defective. You did not post a coliform test result. I think most positive coliform tests of wells that have been sanitized since well work was done are due to bad sampling technique. https://terrylove.com/forums/index....izing-extra-attention-to-4-inch-casing.65845/ is my well and plumbing sanitizing write-up. I am not a pro.

 

[MaxBlack]

I would disagree w/your statement that a conventional water softener needs to be "maintained constantly" i.e. 16gpg is not that bad IMO (we've had 120gpg and now a 36gpg home). I guess your UV idea owes to past bacteria tests?

You didn't say how you left the house over the winter--in our case we never "winterize" but instead I keep our summer home at 50F all winter long and monitor it with sensors and cameras. We might visit a few times but not enough even to worry about the water softener.

 

[waterborne]

@Reach4 Yes, the UV system was planned due to previously failed coliform tests when the house was being purchased. The well was treated at the time and it came back negative afterwards. What we had heard from others in the area was that sometimes after heavy rainfall seasons, the wells would test positive for bacteria. Since we aren't there most of the time, the thought with the UV was just to kill any bacteria and not have to worry about testing when we came back. I am going to read your post about the improper testing and check out other solutions in case we don't want to put the UV in.

I haven't ever had experience with a softener, I was just getting a lot of negative feedback from in-laws who had one 20 years ago and only talked about how much salt they had to lug into their basement and how miserable it was for them.

@MaxBlack that's exactly the kind of feedback I was looking for. We didn't want to have to have someone come in frequently while we weren't there to add salt or perform other maintenance (???). We are discussing what winterizing means as well, I don't think the mechanical room in the basement would get below freezing in the winter, but we are planning on keeping the heat on at 50 and just monitoring things remotely. We may turn water off to the fixtures when we leave for the coldest part of the winter, but would probably still have water in the pressure tank, heater, and softener once installed.

The recommendation we got was to install a CSI MS48-S3 softener which looks like it has 1.5 cut of resin. It looks like they have a larger unit as well which provides 2 cuft of resin.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Reach4]

Salt needs lugging and lifting to the brine tank. Worthwhile I think. 40 pound bags are common. I use 44 pound Morton bags from Sams. Costco has 50 lb bags.

Each regen of 2 cuft of resin takes 12 to 16 pounds of salt. For mostly 2 people, I think 1.5 cuft of resin would be good. I think you could discontinue regenerations in the winter.

UV needs 5 micron or finer filter to not have particles that bacteria can hide behind.

https://terrylove.com/forums/index....izing-extra-attention-to-4-inch-casing.65845/ is my well and plumbing sanitizing write-up.

 

[MaxBlack]

...We didn't want to have to have someone come in frequently while we weren't there to add salt or perform other maintenance (???). We are discussing what winterizing means as well, I don't think the mechanical room in the basement would get below freezing in the winter, but we are planning on keeping the heat on at 50 and just monitoring things remotely. We may turn water off to the fixtures when we leave for the coldest part of the winter, but would probably still have water in the pressure tank, heater, and softener once installed.

The FIRST YEAR that we had our new Up North "summer house" I checked from our Texas ranch my Wi-Fi thermostat first thing in a February morning and it read 49F while set at 50F. Had a camera in the equipment room and could listen-in to the furnace startup attempts and the purge blower would run for 30secs then shut off. Called the local HVAC company and gave them access code to the electric door lock and the main blower had failed and was replaced by noon. Whew, temps were headed for -8F that night!

Anyone with an Up North 2nd home needs to have Internet and at least a Wi-Fi tstat to keep track of things. If you set to 50F and further have Alerts set-up, any problems with heating can usually be dealt with well before the temp in the house gets to below 32F where waterpipes start to freeze-up. So if you leave your tstat at 50 and have some remote monitoring capability you should be golden.

Modern water softeners run "on demand" i.e. have flow meters built-in so they only run when needed. So the water sits stagnant in the brine well and the resin tank. Absolutely the only "maintenance" you need to be concerned with is you MIGHT want to run the water softener when you visit the house in the wintertime. This only if you already have stinky water and stagnation makes things worse i.e. when you visit you'd want to run water through all the faucets and flush toilets etc. Oh, turn off your well pump when you're not there, and (maybe) after that open a faucet to relieve pressure in the pipes, "just in case" the house might have a pipe in an outside wall or something and 50F in the space doesn't keep a pipe from freezing. At least if it breaks the house doesn't fill with water!

Dunno myself how UV lamps work, but if you have such you'll want not to burn it 24/7 when you're not there i.e. turn that off too.

 

[Reach4]

It is common to have a demand water softener with a demand override (DO) setting of 30 days. I might turn that off or extend it if away for months.

 

[MaxBlack]

Mine has "demand override" setting as well--I think in my case you can set it for "any day of the week" and it will regen if no other regen has taken place. It wasn't a "factory default" setting I don't think--anyway I've made sure mine is off.

Of course if the OP turns-off his well pump circuit breaker then any DO setting ain't gonna flow water anyway.