stockman20
New Member
Hello all,
After having been visited by both RainSoft and Kenetico and having both offer a different $5000 solution, I've taken it upon myself to have a lab test my water and devise a solution myself. However, I will need help from the experts on this forum!
Just to review, we currently have a GE GXSF30H (30,000 grains) softener with a GE whole house filter installed before it. The softener is functioning properly and produces 1gpg water. Our symptom: Orange stains on dishwasher, washing machine, toilets and tub. These stains are easily removed using Super Iron Out - but I don't want them to begin with. After reading through posts on this forum my original suspicion was an undersized softener, but now I'm wondering if we need some sort of additional filtration (like an iron filter). The house has two bathrooms with two people living in it.
Note that I tested the raw well water (bypassed the softener and whole house filter).
Here are the results:
Calcium: 167ppm
Iron: 3.37ppm
Iron-Dissolved: 0
Iron Bacteria: 9000 cfu/mL
Magnesium: 75ppm
Manganese: 0.037ppm
Potassium: 5.4ppm
Silica: 18ppm
Sodium: 34ppm
Zinc: 0.012ppm
Alkalinity (Total as CaCO3): 430ppm
Hardness: 720ppm (42gpg)
pH: 7.6
Total Dissolved Solids: 920ppm
Turbidity: 14 NTU
Chloride: 120ppm
Sulfate: 240ppm
A note on iron bacteria: I paid extra money to have this test done at the advice of folks on this forum. Everything I've read about iron bacteria says that it will show up in your toilet tank as slime on the bottom with an odor to go with it. We have none of these symptoms in our toilet tanks, however we do have the orange staining described above. Therefore, it's interesting to me that the lab found iron bacteria in our water. I welcome comments on this as well.
Thank you all, and Happy New Year!
After having been visited by both RainSoft and Kenetico and having both offer a different $5000 solution, I've taken it upon myself to have a lab test my water and devise a solution myself. However, I will need help from the experts on this forum!
Just to review, we currently have a GE GXSF30H (30,000 grains) softener with a GE whole house filter installed before it. The softener is functioning properly and produces 1gpg water. Our symptom: Orange stains on dishwasher, washing machine, toilets and tub. These stains are easily removed using Super Iron Out - but I don't want them to begin with. After reading through posts on this forum my original suspicion was an undersized softener, but now I'm wondering if we need some sort of additional filtration (like an iron filter). The house has two bathrooms with two people living in it.
Note that I tested the raw well water (bypassed the softener and whole house filter).
Here are the results:
Calcium: 167ppm
Iron: 3.37ppm
Iron-Dissolved: 0
Iron Bacteria: 9000 cfu/mL
Magnesium: 75ppm
Manganese: 0.037ppm
Potassium: 5.4ppm
Silica: 18ppm
Sodium: 34ppm
Zinc: 0.012ppm
Alkalinity (Total as CaCO3): 430ppm
Hardness: 720ppm (42gpg)
pH: 7.6
Total Dissolved Solids: 920ppm
Turbidity: 14 NTU
Chloride: 120ppm
Sulfate: 240ppm
A note on iron bacteria: I paid extra money to have this test done at the advice of folks on this forum. Everything I've read about iron bacteria says that it will show up in your toilet tank as slime on the bottom with an odor to go with it. We have none of these symptoms in our toilet tanks, however we do have the orange staining described above. Therefore, it's interesting to me that the lab found iron bacteria in our water. I welcome comments on this as well.
Thank you all, and Happy New Year!