Educate me on water softeners....

charley95

The tech. guy I spoke with @ Ohio Pure Water told me that the Fleck 5600 I bought has been a design thats been around since 79. He claimed it's a proven design that's easily serviceable. I like the fact that they sell all replacement parts online. I'm not sure how easy replacement parts are to access on older store bought units. Had a Water Boss from Lowes which had a short life, thats why I bought the older design from Ohio Pure.

scubalab

msg wrote: »

Interesting, Al.
Curious, is it soft water that makes it feel like you can't get your hands rinsed?

scubalab wrote: »

Not saying you don't need one Steve. It's a matter of preference. Some people (myself included) prefer hard water.

I will say that when I plumbed our addition, I ran a dedicated line bypassing the softener for our hose bibs AND a spigot at the kitchen sink. Why the spigot you ask? Well, long story short, fast brew coffee makers (Bunn, Keurig) don't like soft water. Something at the molecular level with the water and the coffee grounds causes a coating of sorts on the coffee grounds.

Huh... maybe it's not the water... could be my exceptionally soft and silky skin.

steveinaz

I measured water hardness about 5yrs ago, when I had a CA/CH testing kit--I believe it was like 425ppm.

tonyb

charley95 wrote: »

The tech. guy I spoke with @ Ohio Pure Water told me that the Fleck 5600 I bought has been a design thats been around since 79. He claimed it's a proven design that's easily serviceable. I like the fact that they sell all replacement parts online. I'm not sure how easy replacement parts are to access on older store bought units. Had a Water Boss from Lowes which had a short life, thats why I bought the older design from Ohio Pure.

Nuthin' wrong with older designs. Like I said, it's not an overly complicated process what these things do. The newer models have all gone digital, so frequency of repairs may be greater, much like washer and dryers with their digital boards against the older more reliable designs.

Which, in my view, makes most store bought brands throw aways. You get 7 or 8 years out of them, toss them and spend 400 bucks for a new one. I'm on my 7th year with my last store bought brand, who knows....but I sure won't spend 250 bucks to fix a 400 buck softener. That's just me though.

tonyb

Curious as to what maintenance there is to do ? If you already have a softener, replacing it doesn't require any great skill. Anyone that can turn a nut or valve can do it.

The older models that were made of metal needed to be flushed, but todays are all plastic, so the salt has little bearing on wear and tear. Plus back in the day you didn't have salt with rust inhibitors, which also wasn't good for metal tanks or your pipes. They still make metal tank softeners today, but are far better quality and treated inside against rust.

Just about everything inside a WS today is plastic, digital controlled, not much you need to do except dial it in, set the timer, and forget you ever saw it....until you have to add salt to it.

Stew

Imo, softeners with a separate resin tank and salt tank (eg Fleck) have a significant advantage if you are treating really hard water. 425 ppm is extremely hard water. If that figure is correct, you'll really appreciate the larger salt tank so you're not adding salt as often. The separate salt tank is also easy to remove, take outside and clean. This is probably only an issue with really hard water and the associated large quantities of salt.

The other advantage is that you can rebuild these units. Replace the resin and Fleck valve and it's as good as new.

pitdogg2

what about Deionization systems ? anybody have experience with those?

http://filtersmart.com/water-softener-systems/?_vsrefdom=adwords&gclid=CMWOq6nP99MCFcW3wAod0z4ClA

I used to use a small scale system for certain fish I kept.

steveinaz

I think I'm not going to bother. Thanks for the education though fellas!

mrloren

I had an RO in my house. The company would ask me for samples every year for my filter replacement. One time I sent them two. one from the RO and one from the fridge filter. The sample from the fridge came back just as good as the RO. I pulled out the RO and my water usage went down 20%.

pitdogg2

@santiagoago reported spam

BlueFox

LOL. Water softener spam. I wonder how long he has waited to post that?