Arsenic fix?

[Chad D.]

Good evening! Trying to help a friend get pointed in the right direction, and hoping to find some help here.

Looks like they have some arsenic to wrangle, but not much else from what I can see.

Their current system includes a RO in the pump house, which is slow. It trickles water into a 350 gallon tank that is then pumped to the house and shop via jet pump. With a regular house, an apartment in the shop, and filling an RV, they’d really like to keep everything filtered, rather than a small unit for the kitchen sink.

The problem is their system is too slow to keep up sometimes.


After seeing their water test results, can you offer input on what might be the most appropriate method to provide safe water? I’m unfamiliar with arsenic treatment, so I don’t even know if the RO is the best option…

Their well makes a good volume. IIRC, they’re in the 20gpm range. The bottleneck is their filter.

Any input is appreciated!

 

[cdherman]

What to they do with the waste RO water? Pump it back into the well or just let it run away? I got tired of "wasting" my RO waste water (you typically waste 4 gallons water for every gallon used). So I rigged a tank and replumbed a toilet to use the waste water. Its fine for that.

Without knowing how far the well and RO unit is at your friends place, it hard to say. But the idea of using RO water for ALL purposes makes little sense. That arsenic is not hurting anything unless you drink or cook with it. Figuring out how to split their uses up (the toilets are the most logical, followed by cold water to showers etc) could be a solution.

Just my $0.02

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Chad D.]

Local shop is suggesting an Avid FEB1248HMX “heavy metal” backwashing filter after the softener that is already owned. While the water is not hard, it sounds like the FEB1248HMX works best with very low iron. The softener should remove the little iron he has.

Thoughts on this?

 

[Reach4]

Interesting.... https://avidwatersystems.com/wp-content/uploads/products/specialty/febw_brochure.pdf says that filter requires low iron. So to use that, device, after the softener makes some sense. When a softener is dealing with iron, you like to do some treatment to the resin. Your iron level is fairly low.

I wonder what media that unit uses. I wonder how frequent "occasional media replacement" is. Replacing media may not be as easy as it sounds.

Backwashing filters are usually put in front of the softener.

The iron in the water helps remove the arsenic for most media (opposite of your proposed unit). My iron+H2S filter takes my 0.006 arsenic to below the sensitivity of the lab test for me. But that is a side effect, and I have more iron.

Backwashing filters usually take more backwashing gpm than softener. Your proposed unit uses 7 gpm backwash. Not all softeners or well systems can produce a full 7 gpm for backwashing. You might check that you will have enough backwash.

So despite my comments, I don't have a better prescription for you. You have put a lot of good thought into this.

 

[Chad D.]

Good point on the softener being able to flow enough to facilitate adequate backwashing on the second filter. I’ll see what I can track down on that.

Assuming that the treated water would need to be regularly tested till a decent interval can be determined. Media is listed as “HMX10” heavy metals reduction media.