Water Softner

[CL (dnoyeB) Gilbert]

Is it ok to drink this water? It seems like only the water to the hot water heater is ever softened. Why is this?

[Percival P. Cassidy]

Good question. My brother-in-law installed a water softener that softens

*all* their water, then added a reverse osmosis device to remove the sodium resulting from the softening process.

We're thinking of installing a water softener, but having it feed only the water heater wouldn't do the trick because we often wash clothes with warm water (i.e., a mixture of hot and cold). OTOH, we don't want to be softening the water with which we water the garden. We'll just have to figure out the precise point in the system at which to connect the water softener.

Perce

On 11/30/05 10:19 am CL (dnoyeB) Gilbert tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

[nospambob]

[jm44316]

Mine's setup to feed the outside sillcocks and the cold water line to the kitchen sink hard water. Everything else is soft water.

[Gary Slusser]

The formula to determine how much added sodium from a softener using sodium chloride salt is: 7.85 mg/l (roughly a quart) per grain per gallon (gpg) of compensated hardness. Compensated hardness is all the hardness + 4 times the iron ppm + 2 times the manganese. I'E 20 gpg hardness * 7.85 = 157 mg/l added sodium per roughly a quart of the water. If you check the label on a loaf of white bread, the average sodium per slice is usually 120-150 mg. An 8 oz glass of ski, milk... IIRC 530 and my V8 juice has 590 per 8 fl oz. So eat a potato chip or pretzel or slice of bread less per day and drink a quart of your softened water... and you'll actually LOWER your sodium intake!!

Gary Quality Water Associates

[CL (dnoyeB) Gilbert]

Well what I didnt know was that the softner used Sodium Chloride. There are other non drinkable salts and I was not aware it was using a typically edible one. Especially table salt?

[Tony Hwang]

Hi,

5 different houses I have lived in the past all had softners.Tap for drinking was never softened. House was plubed that way. Any how we don't drink out of tap. Tony