water softeners...recommendations?

[Dan F]

Do you use softened water for the washing machine? 

 

We have a harvey water softener at our current rental propery and it's a nightmare for washing cloths.  You have to be very careful with dosing (use a lot lot less) and even then, artificially softened water is known to be bad for rinsing so wash result not great.

 

After trying different detergents (including the Harvey one) I ended using some test strips to mix the softened/normal water to around 100ppm, as I couldn't work out how to adjust the unit itself.  Now laundry is coming out much better..

[Jeremy Harris]

We find that softened water is absolutely brilliant for both the washing machine and the dishwasher.  Far less detergent is needed, clothes come out a lot better rinsed, dishes have no sign of lime scale marking and the dishwasher stays spotless, with no need to ever run Calgon through it.  We also use far less soap and shampoo, it's much the same as when we lived in Cornwall and SW Scotland, where very little soap or detergent was ever needed.  I reckon we probably save the cost of the salt for the Harvey softener easily, just from the saving in soap, shampoo and detergent.

[Dan F]

6 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

We find that softened water is absolutely brilliant for both the washing machine and the dishwasher.  Far less detergent is needed, clothes come out a lot better rinsed, dishes have no sign of lime scale marking and the dishwasher stays spotless, with no need to ever run Calgon through it.  We also use far less soap and shampoo, it's much the same as when we lived in Cornwall and SW Scotland, where very little soap or detergent was ever needed.  I reckon we probably save the cost of the salt for the Harvey softener easily, just from the saving in soap, shampoo and detergent.

 

Not our experience, but maybe ours is configured to take it down to 0ppm (it was consuming 2 blocks every 3 weeks almost!) so we were getting the side-effects of artifically softened water too.  Here is an explanation of what I think our problem was: https://www.thoughtco.com/difficulty-rinsing-soap-with-soft-water-607879

 

Anyway, at 100ppm we are much happier with washing results and we're not consuming salt like crazy either,.  Also, 100ppm is low enough to not make cleaning bathrooms too much of an issue.

 

For our new build, we'll probably want to try to find a water softener that has a configurable output hardness..if they exist, lot of other things to decide on before water softeneers though...

 

[Grendel]

3 hours ago, PeterStarck said:

I would tee into the main where it enters the house, if it is possible, and use all the existing pipework in the house. Unless you have a medical reason why you shouldn't drink softened water I wouldn't worry, Wendy is doing well on it and has for more that 20 years.

So does softened water taste salty?

 

And wouldn't filtered hard water have more calcium in it ( assuming your kidney stones are calcium rather than uric acid or struvite ) and so be worse for kidney stones. Sodium in softened water would just be bad for raised BP

[Jeremy Harris]

51 minutes ago, Grendel said:

So does softened water taste salty?

 

And wouldn't filtered hard water have more calcium in it ( assuming your kidney stones are calcium rather than uric acid or struvite ) and so be worse for kidney stones. Sodium in softened water would just be bad for raised BP

 

No, there is zero salt in softened water.  Ion exchange softeners only use salt to recharge the ion exchange resin with sodium ions during the regeneration cycle, all the chloride ions go down the drain during regeneration, along with the exchanged calcium ions that have been stored in the resin.

 

There is a small amount of sodium in softened water, but this needs to be put into perspective with the sodium level in other stuff.  For example, if you lived in a hard water area, and drank two litres per day of softened water, then the sodium intake from that 2 litres of water would be about 7% of the recommended daily intake of sodium.

 

Milk, for example, contains about 5 times more sodium than softened water, volume for volume.

 

Filtering, though any non-ion exchange filter media won't change the relative concentration of ions in the water.  At best it will remove some suspended solids and maybe remove some organic content, plus, perhaps, some elements like chlorine, bromine etc.

[Onoff]

Interesting about the BP issue. Suffered from high BP in the past and have to watch my diet on occasion if it goes up. Does running softened water through say a Britta filter reduce the sodium?

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Interesting about the BP issue. Suffered from high BP in the past and have to watch my diet on occasion if it goes up. Does running softened water through say a Britta filter reduce the sodium?

 

No, a normal Brita filter will only remove some solids plus stuff like chlorine and some organic compounds. 

 

My experience, having been diagnosed with essential hypertension around 30 years ago, has been that a low sodium diet has no measurable effect on BP.  I have maintained my daily salt intake at below about 5,000mg for years (the recommended daily salt intake is not more than 9,000mg/day), and this isn't really hard.  Just avoiding foods with a high salt content (not really stuff like crisps and salted nuts, most salt is hidden in stuff like fast food, and non-salty stuff, like milk and cheese).

[Onoff]

22 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

the recommended daily salt intake is not more than 9,000mg/day

 

I thought the NHS guideline was 6,000mg/day?

[Gone West]

12 hours ago, Onoff said:

No idea yet where I'll run the drain to. How much water comes out? Could I ditch it under the suspended floor?

 

Ditto the over flow, where does that go to?

There is too much regeneration waste water too lose under the floor. Could you take it to the basin waste? The overflow could just go through an outside wall.

[Gone West]

12 hours ago, Dan Feist said:

Do you use softened water for the washing machine? 

 

We have a harvey water softener at our current rental propery and it's a nightmare for washing cloths.  You have to be very careful with dosing (use a lot lot less) and even then, artificially softened water is known to be bad for rinsing so wash result not great.

 

After trying different detergents (including the Harvey one) I ended using some test strips to mix the softened/normal water to around 100ppm, as I couldn't work out how to adjust the unit itself.  Now laundry is coming out much better..

Your experience isn't the same as ours and we have been using water softeners for over 25 years. The unit should be set up by the supplier to take account of the hardness of the water in your area. Did you measure the hardness yourself or did the supplier use your postcode to determine the hardness? We use liquid detergent which we dilute 50/50 with water in the bottle. We never use more than the standard amount for a wash and often a little less.

[Gone West]

11 hours ago, Grendel said:

So does softened water taste salty? 

 

And wouldn't filtered hard water have more calcium in it ( assuming your kidney stones are calcium rather than uric acid or struvite ) and so be worse for kidney stones. Sodium in softened water would just be bad for raised BP

It doesn't taste salty.

[Dreadnaught]

Sodium content aside, does the water tase different from hard water? It is palatable for someone used to drinking hard water?

[Jeremy Harris]

10 hours ago, Onoff said:

 

I thought the NHS guideline was 6,000mg/day?

 

 

You're right, my mistake.

 

The problem I found when looking at salt/sodium intake was that a lot of the stuff is hidden in processed food.  A tiny tin of baked beans, for example, has around 900mg of salt.  That 900mg of salt is equivalent to about 360mg of sodium, which is about as much as would be in about 2.8 litres of our softened water, or about 0.88 litres of milk. 

 

8 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

Sodium content aside, does the water tase different from hard water? It is palatable for someone used to drinking hard water?

 

Doesn't seem to taste any differently, but does make a nicer cup of tea, with none of the scum that you sometimes get with hard water.  The water tastes much the same as the stuff that came out of the tap when we lived in Cornwall, or in SW Scotland, the main difference being that softened hard water tends to still be pretty much the same pH as it was before treatment, whereas the soft water coming out of the taps in soft water areas may be slightly more acidic and have been treated to raise the pH up to an acceptable level.

[Onoff]

38 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

That 900mg of salt is equivalent to about 360mg of sodium

 

Seems you multiply the sodium content by 2.5 to get the salt figure.

 

57 minutes ago, Dreadnaught said:

does the water tase different from hard water?

 

I'd say not though it tastes, at least to me, "different", "smoother" maybe? We've just come back from a week away where everything was softened and that's prompted me to relook at fitting this one I got from Peter.

 

1 hour ago, PeterStarck said:

Could you take it to the basin waste? The overflow could just go through an outside wall.

 

Having a "with hindsight moment here! Adjacent to the new bathroom is a long corridor, hived off from an original large bedroom by the previous owner. The new bathroom is to the right in the picture below. The cupboard in the new bathroom is just the other side of the (solid brick, circa 300mm) wall where the extension lead is. This pic is taken in the L shaped hall. You go through the door at the bottom right, forefront of the picture into the stairs room and turn left into the new bathroom. 

 

 

I've not got access to a better drawing at the moment but this is when I was messing around with reinstating the original bedroom door off of the hall and making the hall a short straight by removing the L. Was thinking to maybe have half the corridor as a wardrobe and the other half as a small shower/WC. The door to the new bathroom is off the stairs room. Ignore the doorway in the other wall. That's the doorway I blocked up and where the wall hung WC sits now.

 

So as you walk into the new bathroom the cupboard for the softener is on your immediate left. The hatched areas are timber floors. The stairs and bathroom concrete. Thinking run the waste for the softener maybe through the wall into the hall and along to the outside wall. Could recess into the hall wall then go under the hall floor? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Gone West]

5 hours ago, Onoff said:

Could recess into the hall wall then go under the hall floor? 

You would need to check if there is a length limit for the waste pipe. I can't remember, but should be in the instructions I gave you. IIRC the overflow should be a straight run.

[Onoff]

29 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

You would need to check if there is a length limit for the waste pipe. I can't remember, but should be in the instructions I gave you. IIRC the overflow should be a straight run.

 

The requirements for the drain are min 1/2" dia, use 3/4" pipe if the total length exceeds 6m. Elsewhere it says "not more than 6m". Does say to keep the distance of the incoming main and drainage "to a minimum". However...I can it seems take the drain line UP as in into the loft maybe?

 

 

Just playing with positioning it:

 

 

To the right:

 

 

Might make getting the linen bit out awkward:

 

 

Maybe this way?

 

 

I've got a 15mm copper coming down in the wall. Looking to do 22mm, one pipe down and one back up.

 

I can either rip the back wall out and redo or run new 22mms up inside the stud wall and have the bypass valves in there:

 

 

 

 

Edited July 28, 2019 by Onoff

[Gone West]

It's been sitting for over a year, have you tested it to check that it still works?

[Gone West]

8 minutes ago, Onoff said:

I can either rip the back wall out and redo or run new 22mms up inside the stud wall.

 

It's going to be less work to take two new 22mm pipes up the stud wall if connecting at the top is straightforward.

[Onoff]

9 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

It's been sitting for over a year, have you tested it to check that it still works?

 

Well it powers up...

 

Guess take it into the garden and get the hose connected then run through the commission  & start up and see what happens?

 

 

6 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

 

It's going to be less work to take two new 22mm pipes up the stud wall if connecting at the top is straightforward.

 

Wondering if I could reuse the 15mm in the wall (goes up into the loft) as the drain? Then feed the WC off the new 22mm pipe?

 

Edited July 28, 2019 by Onoff

[Gone West]

2 minutes ago, Onoff said:

Wondering if I could reuse the 15mm in the wall (goes up into the loft) as the drain?

IIRC the waste pipe is quite a small diameter so using 15mm might cause problems with pressure. Could you feed the waste pipe through the 15mm pipe?

[Onoff]

39 minutes ago, PeterStarck said:

IIRC the waste pipe is quite a small diameter so using 15mm might cause problems with pressure. Could you feed the waste pipe through the 15mm pipe?

 

I'm thinking 15mm might not actually be big enough!

 

 

 

Just roughly measured the waste run and it's about 6m up out of the cupboard, across the loft to the eaves. Thereafter, where it'll go I don't know. Thinking a larger bore drain pipe down to a drain.

 

As it's draining hard elements could you get a "stalactite" issue at the exit pipe?

[Onoff]

The print quality on this diagram 3 in the Wrekin manual is dire. I can't read what it says ref the check valve.

 

 

As best as I can decipher it says:

 

"Check valve <something> required if <something> part of <something> and bypass valve".

 

I suppose I could email Wrekin.

[Gone West]

9 hours ago, Onoff said:

I suppose I could email Wrekin.

Before I bought it I telephoned them and there is an old chap there (probably younger than me), who was very helpful. Could be worth a call.