My water result and how to treat?

[Brokersdad]

Hi all,

So I mentioned in my first posting on the forum I drilled a new well. On my old well I had about 18ppm iron and 5.5 Ph, had to run an Ecowater iron removal unit and a softner, both of which couldn't handle it properly. I'm thinking this new well I can get rid of the iron unit and just run a softner, but I think I am going to rebed the unit because the old stuff is about 5-6 years old and i'm guessing stripped of any good from the iron and bad Ph. One thing I have been noticing, if I test my Ph with a small aquariam type test kit, the Ph appears worse after it goes through my current water softner, can't understand why ?
I'm looking for advice on what resin to use, and have read about Purolite SST-60 resin, wondering if that's for me or not, or what would be the best for that matter. I don't understand testing enough to know if what I have is that bad or not, and how to treat it

My softner resin tank is 10 x54 and has the Autorol head on it. My well water test results are the following. and the recommendations from the lab that tested it. Thanks for any replies *** I just looked at my post and realized it wouldn't space in between my result and the recommended..sorry it's bunched together making it harder to read


To Convert mg/l total hardness to grains/gallons x0.07.
NRNG - No required numerical guideline

Actual recommended

Ph 7.23 6.5-8.5
Nitrate+Nitrate -N(mg/l) <1.00 <10mg/l
Conductance 3.72 <1500
Alkalinity(mg/l) 39 NRNG
Chloride(mg/l) 67 <250 mg/l
Total hardness(mg/l) 136.59 <500mg/l
Calcium(mg/l) 44.00 NRNG
Copper(mg/l) <0.01 <1.0 mg/l
Iron(mg/l) 3.41 <.03 mg/l
Magnesium(mg/l) 6.49 NRNG
Manganese(mg/l) 0.14 <0.05 mg/l
Sodium(mg/l) 13.40 <200 mg/l
Sulfate(mg/l) 20.63 <500 mg/l
Zinc(mg/l) <0.01 <5.0 mg/l
Potassium(mg/l) 1.02 NRNG

[Gary Slusser]

You don't need SST-60 for 3.41 ppm of iron; regular resin will do but use Iron Out about once per month by mixing a 1/4 cup (dry measure) in 2-3 gallons of warmish water and pour it down into the water in the salt tank, wait 2 hrs and then do a manual regeneration. That will keep things nice and clean of iron residue.

[Brokersdad]

Thanks for the reply Gary. I was thinking since I posted yesterday...the iron unit I have has clack birm and pyrolox mixture in it, would there be any advantage to still using that to handle the 3.4 iron, then using my softner just to keep everything else in order?Second thing i thought of was maybe I could get rid of the softner all together and just run the iron unit? Not really to many around here you can ask this stuff , they just want to sell you a new $2000 unit and chuck the stuff you have.

[Tom Sawyer]

If it were me I would run them both. Although the softener will handle iron to some degree, it's going to be less maintenance if you run the iron filter also and, since you already have the unit.......... You can try running without the softener but you will still have hard water so.....run em both.

[LLigetfa]

Ja, I'm with Tom on that. Unless the iron filter is restricting your volume and/or pressure I'd keep using it.

[Gary Slusser]

I've never heard of mixing birm and Pyrolox. They shouldn't get along very well together because birm is very light and Pyrolox is very heavy. And really, there is no good reason to mix them.

If you have more than 3 gpg of hardness, I'd go with the softener and remove the hardness and iron.

[Brokersdad]

Back when they put the iron unit in, it wasn't performing 100% so he came back to add more stuff to it. I asked what it as he was adding and what he hoped it would do and he said it was pyrolox . He claimed he added about .5 cu ft and said it was a better iron scavanger then the clack that comes in the unit, and felt that the extra boost it would give, would do what he was trying to do. Maybe that's why it never worked that great..idk ? I was just thinking of rebedding it with clack birm and running it. So Gary , am I correct when I think I have around 9 gpg of hardness from the numbers I posted here? And if I am to rebed the softner sometime, what would your recommendation be. I see from my papers they have Purolite Ion -exchange resin in it now and I think I remember them saying it was fine. That's all I have to go by. Thanks to all of you very much for your posts btw.

[Gary Slusser]

He added Pyrolox because the birm or whatever wasn't doing the job. The Pyrolox being heavier in oin the bottom of the tank and is supposed to grab any iron getting through the lighter birm or whatever. The backwash for Pyrolox is much more than it should be for birm and will cause friction wear on the birm depleting the volume of birm (or whatever it is). Then there's more iron getting through it not enough Pyrolox to do the job and you get iron through the filter.

Plus you have 9 gpg hardness and need a softener, so use it to get rid of the 3.5 ppm of iron and hardness.

If you have fine mesh and go to regular mesh you have to change the distributor tube and any top basket and the injector, injector throat, DLFC and possibly the BLFC. Your cycle position times also. So it would be best to stay with fine mesh but be sure that is what you have before ordering the wrong resin.

You convert mg/l or ppm of hardness to grains per gallon by dividing them by 17.1.

[water solutions]

I agree sticking with fine mesh resin is better. But, if you do change to standard mesh resin, there is no reason to change distributors, baskets, etc., I believe. If you went from standard to fine mesh, yes, butnot other way around.

[Brokersdad]

Thanks for all the advice. I'm pretty sure it's fine in it now. It's only been a week or so since hooking to my new well so it's going to take me a while to figure out what to run the softner at. Going to have to try and figure out how much salt to use, how many backwashes etc

[Gary Slusser]

I agree sticking with fine mesh resin is better. But, if you do change to standard mesh resin, there is no reason to change distributors, baskets, etc., I believe. If you went from standard to fine mesh, yes, butnot other way around.

You use a lower gpm DLFC with fine mesh resin than regular mesh resin and the slots in the bottom basket and any top basket are much narrower than used for regular mesh resin. And a new distributor tube and any top basket is very inexpensive online or from a local independent dealer or plumbing/pump supply house that sells softeners.

He could buy one or both with the substantial savings between the much lower regular mesh price and the higher price for fine mesh resin.