- Oct 25, 2015
- 5,813
- Pool Size
- 28000
- Surface
- Plaster
- Chlorine
- Salt Water Generator
- SWG Type
- CircuPool RJ-60 Plus
Folks,
You may have read my previous thread about dealing with nasty well water here. I thought I had licked the problem completely with cationic and anionic resin softening plus aerated catalytic carbon and H202 injection. And I had for a while. But slowly over the next few weeks we had a slight (to me, much stronger to my wife) sulfur odor. It was so low I barely could detect it so I kind of blew it off and hoped my wife would learn to live with it. Bad decision. Eventually we had guests and all the ladies could smell it. One hubby even detected it. So I started testing with my fancy ampule based super-sensitive sulfide test kit. It reliably tests .05 ppm and almost any level with a color change. It took some effort to make sure I captured good samples and immediately tested them. Sulfides clearly vaporize quickly from the water in just minutes. With some sampling practice it became clear I had a tiny bit of sulfide making it through the system and was typically .05 ppm or less. I believe this is due to the fact that treatment processes I am using are not complete removal. Maybe over 90% but not complete. So starting with inlet water of 1.2 ppm it was conceivable there will always be residual that is detectable by many, mostly female people.
One thing that puzzled me is the under sink RO units we have produced pristine smelling water all the time. I couldn't figure out how this is possible since it is well-documented that these membranes allow H2S to pass through almost completely which has the effect of concentrating H2S instead of removing it. How could mine be so sweet? Then I remembered these units have 2 activated carbon filters. Could they be removing the trace amounts? After numerous guest complaints I was pretty desperate. I searched for a whole house polishing filter that would do the trick. There are MANY choices ranging from pretty cheap to almost $100 not including the housing. At this point I needed a definite solution so I purchased a 20" (Big Blue knock-off) housing and the high $ refillable media cartridge that contained a combination of KDF-85, Brim, and catalytic carbon. Installation was simple and I included piping to allow me to easily flush the filter. This took longer than I thought to get the black dust out. Then I filled the first sample and cautiously gave it to the wife to test. She smiled and said "that's perfect!". I was elated. Decided not to report this for a few weeks just to be sure it works... It's been a month now and I think this is finally the solution. Information I obtained indicate this filter has capacity to remove 3 ppm for 50,000 gal. With just the wife and me most of the time at ~200 gal/day and less than .05 ppm it should last for years. I'll report back as we have more time on the filter.
I hope this is helpful for anybody else on here with the dreaded "wife doesn't like your water" problem!
Chris
You may have read my previous thread about dealing with nasty well water here. I thought I had licked the problem completely with cationic and anionic resin softening plus aerated catalytic carbon and H202 injection. And I had for a while. But slowly over the next few weeks we had a slight (to me, much stronger to my wife) sulfur odor. It was so low I barely could detect it so I kind of blew it off and hoped my wife would learn to live with it. Bad decision. Eventually we had guests and all the ladies could smell it. One hubby even detected it. So I started testing with my fancy ampule based super-sensitive sulfide test kit. It reliably tests .05 ppm and almost any level with a color change. It took some effort to make sure I captured good samples and immediately tested them. Sulfides clearly vaporize quickly from the water in just minutes. With some sampling practice it became clear I had a tiny bit of sulfide making it through the system and was typically .05 ppm or less. I believe this is due to the fact that treatment processes I am using are not complete removal. Maybe over 90% but not complete. So starting with inlet water of 1.2 ppm it was conceivable there will always be residual that is detectable by many, mostly female people.
One thing that puzzled me is the under sink RO units we have produced pristine smelling water all the time. I couldn't figure out how this is possible since it is well-documented that these membranes allow H2S to pass through almost completely which has the effect of concentrating H2S instead of removing it. How could mine be so sweet? Then I remembered these units have 2 activated carbon filters. Could they be removing the trace amounts? After numerous guest complaints I was pretty desperate. I searched for a whole house polishing filter that would do the trick. There are MANY choices ranging from pretty cheap to almost $100 not including the housing. At this point I needed a definite solution so I purchased a 20" (Big Blue knock-off) housing and the high $ refillable media cartridge that contained a combination of KDF-85, Brim, and catalytic carbon. Installation was simple and I included piping to allow me to easily flush the filter. This took longer than I thought to get the black dust out. Then I filled the first sample and cautiously gave it to the wife to test. She smiled and said "that's perfect!". I was elated. Decided not to report this for a few weeks just to be sure it works... It's been a month now and I think this is finally the solution. Information I obtained indicate this filter has capacity to remove 3 ppm for 50,000 gal. With just the wife and me most of the time at ~200 gal/day and less than .05 ppm it should last for years. I'll report back as we have more time on the filter.
I hope this is helpful for anybody else on here with the dreaded "wife doesn't like your water" problem!
Chris
