gcsherwood
New Member
My last two water softener were WaterBoss City (don't remember the number) but I was on city water and just wanted to clean and soften it a bit and installed them myself. Well, the kidlings are fleeing the nest, and we've purchased a smaller house which has a well. Never had one of those before, and everthing I've read says Fleck is a significant upgrade over what I was used to. Testing says 13 grains of hardness and 2ppm of iron. There is an old Kinetico system there (local Kinetico office had installed it for the previous owner and found the records -- but were quite unforthcoming as to what the system did. Odd.). Whatever it is doing, it reduces sediment drastically (though not perfectly) and iron from 5 ppm to 2 ppm. No change to hardness (and without a salt tank that doesn't surprise me). Local guys (not from K) are going to come out and look at the system and do whatever recharging etc it needs (we bought it from the heirs to the estate and they knew nothing about the house). Because pre-filter sample was lower in iron than the post-filter sample they think I have an iron filter. If true, they think maybe they can get the iron down with new media. I'm leaving town in two weeks (for 5 months in Ireland) and would like to get this fixed before I go, if possible.
So I plan to tap into the piping after the Kinetico system because it is obviously doing something good. I will run it through a softener, then a 50 micron filter for the bigger stuff, thence to a 5 micron, thence to a UV unit (we tested positive for bacteria). The UV unit uses 3/4", so I sized the filters for the same. The Kinetico uses 1" pvc.
I've been reading the threads on this forum and know Gary prefers the 5600sxt and Dittohead the 7000sxt. On balance I'm persuaded to the 7000sxt. We are just two people, and we need to keep the flow to less than 8-10 gpm for the UV. We have two bathrooms -- but it will be exceedingly rare for the second shower to be used at all. An occasional house guest, perhaps. Because of the iron, Gary's calculator came out to 1.5 cuft of media.
The turbulator says it is good for iron, but others indicate it is more trouble than it is worth (and perhaps my 2ppm of iron can be reduced further anyway). Fine mesh resin is also recommended for iron. Worth it? And finally, Morton has an iron removing salt that says it removes 15x the amount of iron as regular salt. More expensive, of course. Does it really work as intended and is it worth the extra cost. It isn't that much and if it is better I'm certainly fine with it, but I hate to throw money away if there is no point!
Have I overlooked anything? Doing something stupid? Any suggestions or help would be much appreciated!
thanks,
Geoff
So I plan to tap into the piping after the Kinetico system because it is obviously doing something good. I will run it through a softener, then a 50 micron filter for the bigger stuff, thence to a 5 micron, thence to a UV unit (we tested positive for bacteria). The UV unit uses 3/4", so I sized the filters for the same. The Kinetico uses 1" pvc.
I've been reading the threads on this forum and know Gary prefers the 5600sxt and Dittohead the 7000sxt. On balance I'm persuaded to the 7000sxt. We are just two people, and we need to keep the flow to less than 8-10 gpm for the UV. We have two bathrooms -- but it will be exceedingly rare for the second shower to be used at all. An occasional house guest, perhaps. Because of the iron, Gary's calculator came out to 1.5 cuft of media.
The turbulator says it is good for iron, but others indicate it is more trouble than it is worth (and perhaps my 2ppm of iron can be reduced further anyway). Fine mesh resin is also recommended for iron. Worth it? And finally, Morton has an iron removing salt that says it removes 15x the amount of iron as regular salt. More expensive, of course. Does it really work as intended and is it worth the extra cost. It isn't that much and if it is better I'm certainly fine with it, but I hate to throw money away if there is no point!
Have I overlooked anything? Doing something stupid? Any suggestions or help would be much appreciated!
thanks,
Geoff