Best Method for Residential Water Treament ? 3

[imnedkelly]

I live in a rural area with a well-based water supply. The water is extremely hard and I'm told I'm already into the best aquifer in the area.

We get gray-white reside in the toilets, baths, and showers, organge staining on the shower heads, sacle-like reside in the glasses.

I installed a SEARS water softener but, frankly, I don't like the time and effort it takes to operate it.

I would like something more "low maintenance". I have read about the magnetic systems but am still unsure as to whether or not they are a scam. I know little about the effectiveness of reverse osmosis systems.

Can anyone give me advice as to which direction they think I should go?

Thanks...Brian "Ned" Kelly

 

[snafuman]

For hardness the water softener is the standard treatment. I too have always heard about the magnetic systems but I've never seen one in action, and I've never seen a reputable local water equipment dealer selling them. Most health agency engineers I've dealt with think they are a scam.
One other alternative for hardness is polyphosphates. They are injected into the water with a metering pump (like a chlorine pump). The don't remove anything but they bind hardness, iron and manganese into a different chemical form to prevent scaling, coloring, etc. They won't stay stable in hot water heaters. They are NSF approved, although I personally would be a little leary of drinking them in my water for the rest of my life. However, only a tiny fraction of most water supplies are actually used for drinking.
Do a web search for reverse osmosis systems, you will get lots of hits. I could be wrong, but I don't believe they work for hardness.

 

[pendever]

I had a ClearWave electromagnetic device for 5 years, in an extremely hard-water, high-iron area of NM. It seemed to help with scale, and as a side benefit we weren't even supposed to get, the water tasted better, too. However, Consumer Reports tested a ClearWave unit and found 'no benefit'. I'm looking now at something similar called 'Scaleban'. Anybody know anything about them?

 

[prodeng]

My understanding of the magnetic systems is that they polarize the ions instead of exchanging them like a water softener does. As to their effectiveness, I really can't answer them, but I also am looking into something like that to replace my softener.

As for an RO system, you probably would not want to use that for the whole house. Typically, you have to send roughly 4 gallons of water down the drain to produce 1 gallon of good water. The reason is that the RO membrane will plug prematurely otherwise. It is great for drinking water, and does take a lot of things out of the water (minerals that cause many stains and residues), but there is a type of hardness that only a water softener can effect (i.e. ion exchange with calcium bicarbonate). This is a whole field of study. There is an organization called the Water Quality Association (WQA) and their website

http://www.wqa.org

may lead you to some answers you want as well.

 

[DeltaCascade]

Magnetic scale inhibition is a scam! Beware of carefully selected testimonials. Conduct well controlled experiments before coming to conclusions and you'll see what we mean.

Maybe manganese is your problem. Iron, too. You'd need, for example, an iron or green sand filter to remove iron .. zeolite softeners don't do that - they just replace calcium and magnesium for sodium (hence, regeneration with sodim chloride salt is intermittently required).

Reverse osmosis would likley work very well, giving very soft water, also free of other contaminants. As above, there is large reject flow .. but in the treated product water, calcium carbonates etc, essentially all hardness, would be removed.

A detailed water analysis would help define your problem.

Wayne//

 

[sskdr]

Orange stains on your shower head:Its due to Iron present in water which may have Iron Bacteria in it.
Scaling amy be either due to presence of Complex Calsium and Magnesium salts.But My suggestin to you would be to get your water sample checked first and then install any kind of filter or treatment plant.

 

[ace7]

I think your best bet is to stick with the water softener(it does require some work but is very effective). As for an RO unit I wouln't recommend using one with hard water. Scale builds up inside and clogs the pores of the membrane. I would recommend RO for drinking water. I have just heard of a new company which makes RO units which are superior to all other RO units. The rejection rate is 2:1 (which means for every gallon of good water you get you dump about half of a gallon), these new units are also self-cleaning and require no post filter(it makes sense I suppose, why have another filter after the membrane which removes 99% of all matter). I bought one of these units for about $290 (Canadian dollars) and its amazing. I don't think they have a web site yet but their e-mail address is custommembrane@hotmail.com

 

[zozon]

My parents used to live for awhile in a rural area and water supplied through local system was untreated in any way. So I found (it wa the last one in somebody's garage) the NSA filter. It was very popular sometimes in early 90's. So after they installed it they took a sample to the lab and results were above requirements for drinking water.
Another thing is what you want to use treated water for: drinking only or to protect your entire plumbing system. NSA gives good results in small comsuption. They had a bigger systems for households but I had no chance to check them.

Zozon

 

[DeltaCascade]

On that filter, I wonder what the water quality was before it, and compare that to after it... to se what the filter did. If it is an activated carbon filter one would expect that it would remove/deactivate chlorine, absorb some organics such as pesticides (if any) and perhaps filter some turbidity or suspended solids, but that's about it...

 

[wiwie]

If you only want to reduce scale and colour formation, you can simply add granular citric acid to the raw water about 50 ppm (50 grams citric acid per 1000 litre raw water)
Although it is not a poison (it's used to make sour taste in beverages / syrup), it's not recommended to drink the treated water since all contaminant is still dissolved in the water.
If your water source contains higher calcium or iron, you can increase the dosage up to 200 ppm (it's taste a little sour already)
The treated water is slightly corrosive, but it stops scaling and coloration.

Regards,
wiwie

 

[ozfish]

Do a search on a system Akvastroiservis "Deferum" it has solved my problems and I live in a rural area in Australia. Let me know if you would like to know more.