Water Softner

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[Danielie21]

I'm putting a water softner in the next couple of days. I was wondering if anyone has their RO/DI system before or after softner?

[Brandonbowden]

The ro/di goes inline after the softener you want the cleanest water you can get to go into your ro so it has less work to do and your membranes last longer.
Brandon

[Nate C.]

I personally had mine left off the softener.  But, I use a ton of water and didn't want to have to spend the money on the additional salt and such.  plus, I didn't like the idea of feeding the RO salted water causing it to have to remove that.  Richland water isn't that hard on filters anyway for the RO/DI.  Even with a 270 gallon, 50gal frag and the 29gal "QT" I still get 1.5 years or so before the DI cartridge has to be replaced (monitoring with inline TDS meter before and after DI).

[Nate R]

i m with nate c on this one as well. no need to soften before filtering, softeners add minerals to water that then need to be removed by ro/di

If you want to know what kind of water is going in to the ro/di, go to a water quality lab locally and have them run a test on to see what your removing so you can know what filters you may want to keep an eye on. for instance here in Selah were i live we have almost 3 times the standard rate of chlorine in our water so i replace my carbon blocks every 90 days max.

[jerryB]

I actually have contacted Culligan, the Water Store and SpectraPure, an RO/DI manufacturer, regarding this very question.  All stated that the RO/DI be installed after the water softener and not before. It was explained that it is primarily calcium and magnesium that form the scale on the membrane - these are removed by your water softener resulting in better performance and extended life to the membranes. SpectraPure also revealed that the water used in testing to generate the specifications is done with softened water, and that the use of soft water was the industry standard for testing.

[Brandonbowden]

Added side note I used to work at tri city water store learned quite a bit about softeners and ro/di water treatment.

[Nate R]

i can totally see why Culligan, spectra pure, ect told you that information. Culligan sells them for one and as far as a testing standpoint it gives all manufactures a constant in the ever changing variable to water qualities that may be run though the unit for a life span estimate that they can report or advertise to the customer.

For every Calcium/Magnesium ion that passes through a softener (if working at 100%) is replaced with a sodium ion. Both calcium, magnesium, and sodium will be removed by your Ro/Di. I can run a 100gpd membrane for a year with very little signs of slowing. I will also note that i pay wholesale prices on my filters/membranes so it really doesn't hurt my wallet to keep fresh filters in at all times so i wasn't trying to get two years out of a membrane.

If you don't have extremely hard water in your area i personally would not spend any extra money and time on trying to get soft water to your RO/DI. More current plumbing practice is to not run softened water to the kitchen sink because of the recent study's relating sodium to blood pressure problems, just to the showers, toilets, appliances. If your just retrofitting a softener in to your existing home more than likely your getting soft water to everything because the original plumbing wont isolate drinking water areas from showers,toilets, and appliances. This means you would have to isolate your ro/di to not get soft water to it.

[Ed]

very good points on both sides!   Thanks for Heads up. 

[jerryB]

An added note to consider, Richland and Pasco's city supplied water is relatively soft, around 2 to 4 grains, but Kennewick's water is very hard typically between 6 and 8 grains.