3 companies came to do tests, please advise on which softener

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ditttohead

Water systems designer, R&D
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A cu. ft. of water softener resin has a theoretical capacity of 32,000 grains if it regenerated with 16-18 pounds of salt. You can regenerate the same cu. ft. of resin with 6 pounds and get 20,000 grains or 8 pounds and get 24,000 grains removal. These lowere salt setting are obviously far more efficient. The lower salt settings can allow some hardness leakage, but in residential systems, this is rarely noticed.

See the chart below for the manufacturers chart on capacity vs leakage at different salt amounts.

capacity leakage.jpg
 

Gary Slusser

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Road salt corrodes SS. I've known that for over 40 years. In a search for "stainless steel" + salt corrosion I found it is the chlorides part of sodium chloride (salt) that causes the problem. Link below.

Most raw waters will have some chloride in them. Also some sodium. Softeners do not use the chloride part of softener salt (or potassium chloride salt substitute), only some of the sodium part is used and added to the softened water @ 7.85 mg/l (liter is roughly a quart) per grain per gallon of compensated hardness being removed.

If you want to compare that to food/beverages, read some labels for sodium, you will probably be shocked at how much sodium is in our food and beverages.

The chloride part of the softener salt is flushed out to drain during a regeneration. But the raw water chloride is still in the water. The EPA says the suggested max allowed should be 250 ppm or mg/l (same measure).

Read all but in d. water heaters are mentioned specifically.
http://www.bssa.org.uk/faq.php?id=9
 

Tom Sawyer

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I'm gonna throw my 2 cents in here. Not because of the numbers or advice already given but based on what we have been running into in the field when it comes to warranty issues. For the past 10 years or so, most boiler manufacturers have actually started investigating heat exchanger failures. They used to just swap out the exchanger and be done with it but now they are taking water samples and doing forensic evaluation of the units coming back. Most of them have very specific water conditions that they want you to adhere too and non compliance means a void warranty. So you are correct in being concerned with our water quality. The lochnivar is very sensitive to hardness and ph.
 
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