DIY water softener plan/layout - is this good or overkill?

[trdrjojo]

https://imgur.com/a/ez4ygMr

My house currently has 3/4” pex from the main to the existing manifold and water heater

Plan is to:

• replace the main supply line with 1” pex
• tee off hose bibbs
• add a carbon filter with its own 3 valve bypass
• tee off kitchen sink cold line and fridge line
• Add a softener with its own bypass

I originally just wanted one bypass loop across the filter and softener but realized that left no water to kitchen when bypassed. Am I over engineering this?

Also - realized after drawing this that I drew the valves for the bypasses in the wrong spot!

Thoughts/feedback/recommendations? Thanks!

 

[Reach4]

What is the carbon filter? GAC or catalytic carbon? How many cuft? Does the carbon filter have backwash?

Should we presume city water?

I could see a cartridge filter where you have "spindown". Spindown filters would usually be for taking out sand, rather than small stuff or the odd bit of broken resin.

Instead of a permanent pressure gauge, you could put in a boiler valve, and mount a garden hose pressure gauge on occasion. You could then use that boiler valve as a test port.

 

[Sponsor]

 

[trdrjojo]

Thank you for the tips! I was thinking of a 2 cu ft filter (to allow plenty of flow) with catalytic carbon - I’m on city water with chloramine, tested at ~2 ppm. Main concern was for resin life really.

The city water is about 10 gpg, and there’s only two of us here, so seems like a 32K grain softener would be large enough and then some.

What would the advantage of a cartridge be? It seemed like a spin down was very low maintenance, and mostly just thought about it after reading stories of resin going all through the pipes

Is cost the main advantage of the boiler valves? Or would that also be more reliable/less prone to failure?

 

[trdrjojo]

Oh and I don’t have a specific filter (I do want a backwashing one I think) or softener picked out yet - seen a few sites like WaterEStore, US water systems, but would appreciate any recommendations.

 

[Reach4]

Thank you for the tips! I was thinking of a 2 cu ft filter (to allow plenty of flow) with catalytic carbon - I’m on city water with chloramine, tested at ~2 ppm. Main concern was for resin life really.

I have wondered about that. With 10% crosslinked resin, the resin might take the chloramine for a good while. Would the resin last 10 years without the carbon? And how long is the catalytic resin going to need before replacing? 10 years? I don't know those answers.

There is some advantage to the carbon beyond increasing resin life.

I presume you planned carbon tank backwashes periodically.

 

[trdrjojo]

Yeah, I couldn’t find information on that but as you said, there are other advantages to filtering the water as well. So figured I’d go with it.

I presume you planned carbon tank backwashes periodically.

Can you explain? I had kind of figured that the valve programming would backwash automatically on a unit like this https://www.discountwatersofteners....lter-for-removal-of-chlorine-and-chloramines/

 

[Reach4]

"backwash" appears 13 times on the page you linked to.

Explain what?

I would prefer a Fleck or Clack valve.

 

[trdrjojo]

Anywhere you'd recommend to go buy a fleck or clack? From what I can tell, it seems like Clack generally isn't sold online.

When you mention planning backwashes - is there much to plan? I had assumed that the head will just run the backwash cycle automatically based on however it's programmed. Not sure if I'm missing something.