Water softener installation!!

[JoyfulNoise]

Sounds like you guys got the “extra” special kitchen plumbing install. I only have one cold water line that is untreated water. However, even if I did put an RO faucet in (it’s doable but would require me moving around a bunch of stuff), I don’t think it matter’s much if the input water is soft or not. Both calcium and sodium will be rejected by the RO membrane and the calcium levels, as well as TDS, are still low enough to avoid scaling problems. My biggest issue is the waste fraction being so high (4 gallons of input to create 1 gallon of RO water) that I would opt for the higher cost system that includes a permeate pump to improve efficiency. I often look at the RO units that they sell in the big-box stores and few, if any of them, offer systems with a permeate pump. Then again, drinking RO water is not high on my priority list so the thoughts are mostly academic anyway....

 

[chiefwej]

My under sink plumbing was confusing when I moved in. The are four stopcocks under there. Hot and cold soft water, untreated water. The fourth one is not an outlet but plumbed to a line that leads to the fridge. I connected a RO system supplied from the soft water, to feed RO water to the fridge and a small hot water dispenser. The untreated water is plumbed through an activated charcoal filter to a small tap at the sink. That gives me hot/cold soft water at the main taps, hot RO water at small (hot/cold) tap, with hard charcoal filtered on the cold side, and RO water at the fridge for ice and drinking water.

Sounds confusing but this gives me the choice of;
RO both hot and cold,
soft water both hot/cold, and
hard water (charcoal filtered) for cooking,

 

[Arizonarob]

Similar setup on mine. I have hot/cold softened water at the tap, then a separate unsoften tap that goes to my R/O system that then heads to the fridge, and a drinking water tap on the counter. We use the R/O water for drinking, cooking, washing vegetables, etc...

 

[Aimbdd]

What a great idea!! I have plants just on the other side of that wall. No harm at all to your garden-variety garden variety?

Is it under pressure? Could you connect it to drip tubing and distribute to several plants? I don't mean using emitters, that would create back pressure, just a few Ts.

Could I expect that to get clogged up? I have a whole-house filter, so nothing of size is going into the RO. Does it discharge anything of size? Or just water and molecules?

I have mine set up extacly this way, it goes in 3/8 tubing out to my plants, and splits off into two 1/4 branches with a bunch of emitters on both sides. Works perfectly for me, no big chunks of anything or clogging and it’s been running for 6 months. No harm to our plants, or veggies. Now, we have a permeate pump, so they may help with the pressure issue(and does help to reduce waste water) Our waste ratio is about 1:1. Use the water for saltwater aquariums and not drinking.

 

[CavVet]

I figured when my pool water hit 1500ppm CH this past winter, now was a good opportunity to fix it.

sorry for the late question, but i'm curious...what was your TA, pH, and CSI levels when your CH was that high?
i'm trying to decide when it's time to refill my pool, but i'm only at 700 CH now.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

sorry for the late question, but i'm curious...what was your TA, pH, and CSI levels when your CH was that high?
i'm trying to decide when it's time to refill my pool, but i'm only at 700 CH now.

I would typically keep my CSI negative, anywhere from -0.3 to 0. My TA is typically down at 50-60ppm and my pH would be as low as 7.5 unless I was trying to remove a lot of TA, then I drop it to 7.2. I would not let my pH get above 7.8 before lowering it again. My water has borates in it so it takes a little longer for the pH to rise.

Having run the pool from a starting CH of 300ppm all the way up to 1500ppm, I can say that it was very easy to manage when the CH was below 800ppm. I plan to drain a good deal of water soon (when the kids stop swimming) in order to get the CH down below 600ppm. I’d love to get all the way back to 250ppm but that would require a full drain of the pool and I don’t really want to do that so as to avoid any possible plaster issues. With my water softener in place, my pool fill water has zero CH to it so I know wherever I set my level, it will stay there for a long time.

 

[Dirk]

Not that you asked... but I can corroborate. My CH has not risen from 350 since a connected my pool to the softener. But when I was fooling around with rainwater, and lowering the pool a bit just before a rain, to let it fill back up with "pure" water, I noticed a drop in CH to 325. These were basically mini-refills with near-zero-CH water. But instead of leaving the pool full before a rain, and allowing the overflow drain to release the extra water, I pro-actively released water before the rain. The theory being: the rain water would float on top of my salt water, and so what would spill out of the overflow would be mostly the rainwater goodness. By releasing water first, the rain water stays in the pool, and then gets mixed in as the pump runs. Something like that... It'd take some doing to get this to be of much help in our dry states, with the span of numbers you guys are talking about, but the water is free, and clean, so maybe worth a shot! No plaster exposed that way, too.

 

[chiefwej]

I found that with the high CH and high TA in our water here in Tucson, carefully monitoring and controlling CSI is vital. Like Matt, I target negative side between 0.00 and -0.30. Even with borates added, I have found that any CH level over 1000, it becomes just too much of a tightrope act. So in the past, Anytime I hit 1000 I would plan to drain and refill.

Since moving my top-up supply to softened water my rise in CH is very slow. Unlike Matt, I do still see it increasing, but at a much slower rate. My original fill was at 250 and now two years later it’s 375. At least, I no longer have to drain every two years to avoid the dreaded over 1000 CH level.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

One issue that does come up with water softeners hooked up to pools is that the typical flow rate of an autofill line is very, very low and the control valves are not always sensitive to it. For instance, my autofill will dribble out water most of the summer to compensate for evaporation but that dribbling flow is not enough to register on the Clack valve as water flowing out of the softener. So, in that situation, you could potentially be supplying water through the softener that is no longer soft because you’ve exhausted the softener capacity and it hasn’t regenerated yet. This would most likely happen at the very end of the softener’s supply volume.

Now, in my setup, there are some things that prevent this - (1) I have a very high capacity softener and so it can supply a lot of softened water, (2) we use a ton of water in my house because there are 3 adults and 4 kids in the house so the regeneration frequency is high, and (3) the setpoint reserve volume is a bit on the high side. So all of that means the softener will regenerate well before it ever exhausts it’s delivery volume capacity. However, if one were running a softener right on the edge of what it is capable of delivering, then an autofill could easily get some bleed through of hard water before the softener has a chance to regenerate.

When it was installed in May I asked the owner of the softener company what he thought a pool added to the use rate of a softener (he’s a pool owner as well and has his softener hooked into his pool) and he said that his engineer’s pretty much rate it as having person-year of usage. So, when they size a water softener, they treat the pool like an additional member of the family.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

My latest hardness readings -

Total Hardness = 1350ppm
Calcium Hardness (CH) = 1100ppm
Magnesium Hardness = 250ppm

Ca²⁺ : Mg²⁺ = 4:1 (terrestrial waters tend to have a ratio of around 5:1 or so)

So, between my zero hardness fill water and rain exchanges, my annual hardness reduction after water softener install has been about 250ppm. That makes sense as with no water softener I was seeing a 250ppm/year increase in hardness. My plan in a few weeks will be to try to effect a 50% drain of the pool and see if I can't get at or below 600ppm CH. At that level, it will be very easy to maintain a slightly negative CSI with minimal acid additions as my pH and TA can ride quite a bit higher than in the past.

 

[Arizonarob]

Sounds like a plan!!

I had my softener dude out here this past November to change out the cartridges on my RO. While he was here, I was discussing the changing out of my valve on my current system to a more “sensitive” flow rate to compensate for the “trickle” effect you discussed in your previous post.

He too has a pool with it connected to his softener for the autofill. Instead of changing the valve, he recommended to simply turn off the valve to the autofill, then turn it back on when the water level dropped an inch or so. That way your autofill will run wide open delivering soft water, and it also cycles the meter to bring on the regeneration cycle more often.
Seeing as I loose an 1” a day during the summer months due to evaporations, I’ll be testing this out this season. I’m just going to set a reminder on my phone to shut off the water in the morning, then another to turn it back on at night.

$450 bucks for a new sensitive valve, or a free reminder on my phone. I’ll see how it goes.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Good idea! I have a shut off valve both in my garage at the softener and another outside as well (it wasn’t supposed to be that way but the plumber put in both ... redundancy is good I suppose). I will almost surely forget to turn it back on but it’ll be obvious if I find the neighborhood kids using my dried up pools as a skate park

 

[chiefwej]

Since my increase is only about 60 ppm per year, I don’t think it’s really worth turning the auto fill on and off to avoid.

 

[Teald024]

One issue that does come up with water softeners hooked up to pools is that the typical flow rate of an autofill line is very, very low and the control valves are not always sensitive to it. For instance, my autofill will dribble out water....

I ran into this “sensitivity issue” with the main house water meter when I installed a whole house humidifier in my HVAC system. The water flow to the humidifier was so low that the water meter didn’t resister the flow. I suspected the installed softener was the same. I let the water run for an hour and the meter didn’t show any change.

I would think that turning that valve 2x a day would get old quickly and basically defeat the purpose of an autofill.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Just an update ….

I measured my CH today. The last time I measured was …. *cough* *cough* do as I say not as I do * … May 2021.

Last year my CH was 550ppm. Today my CH was somewhere between 550 and 575ppm …. I LOVE MY WATER SOFTENER!!

Previous years experience - with no water softener I would routinely see an annual increase in CH between 250 to 300ppm.

Oh, and I bumped my borates back up above 50ppm

 

[Dirk]

Just an update ….

I measured my CH today. The last time I measured was …. *cough* *cough* do as I say not as I do * … May 2021.

Last year my CH was 550ppm. Today my CH was somewhere between 550 and 575ppm …. I LOVE MY WATER SOFTENER!!

Previous years experience - with no water softener I would routinely see an annual increase in CH between 250 to 300ppm.

Oh, and I bumped my borates back up above 50ppm

I too have seen only a slight rise in my CH since I put the pool on my softener. @JoyfulNoise, where is the CH coming from? Is it just a matter of if getting past the softener?

 

[JoyfulNoise]

I too have seen only a slight rise in my CH since I put the pool on my softener. @JoyfulNoise, where is the CH coming from? Is it just a matter of if getting past the softener?

Pretty much. No softener is perfect. One can use the CH test with a slightly larger test volume and find that most softeners can get the calcium levels fairly low (<5ppm) right after regeneration. It tics up a little with use. And there may also be water additions that bypass the softener for whatever reason (I spray down my concrete deck every so often). Also, during regen, a softener is on bypass mode so any water added during that regen time (typically overnight and mine takes about 2 hours to regen) will be hard water.

 

[Dirk]

Oh, right, the regen. I know about that, because I try not to use indoor plumbing when I know it's in bypass mode. Especially hot water, as I don't want to fill my water heater with hard water. I forgot that if the auto filler operates during regen I'll be pumping in CH. Mine goes at 4:00 am, so perhaps that minimizes that occurrence, as theoretically the evaporation and refill should be at a minimum at that time (I think).

I thought I noticed that the water in my shower is softer some days than others (based on suds). Perhaps that has to do with where the softener is in its regen schedule.

I have a Whirlpool, going on 7.5 years. Will it indicate when it's kaput? Or am I on my own to figure that out? I imagine it's gradual?

 

[Wolfepack88]

Oh, right, the regen. I know about that, because I try not to use indoor plumbing when I know it's in bypass mode. Especially hot water, as I don't want to fill my water heater with hard water. I forgot that if the auto filler operates during regen I'll be pumping in CH. Mine goes at 4:00 am, so perhaps that minimizes that occurrence, as theoretically the evaporation and refill should be at a minimum at that time (I think).

I thought I noticed that the water in my shower is softer some days than others (based on suds). Perhaps that has to do with where the softener is in its regen schedule.

I have a Whirlpool, going on 7.5 years. Will it indicate when it's kaput? Or am I on my own to figure that out? I imagine it's gradual?

I was skimming the thread and wanted to ask you how your tap PH is? My first house we had the culligan had great soft water, but over the years I had to replace many of my shower valves and other fixtures the ph must have been acidic. In my new house we once again added a water softener but went with fleck valves and have a 3 tank system, softener, neutralizer (to neutralize any acidity) and a whole house carbon filter.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Oh, right, the regen. I know about that, because I try not to use indoor plumbing when I know it's in bypass mode. Especially hot water, as I don't want to fill my water heater with hard water. I forgot that if the auto filler operates during regen I'll be pumping in CH. Mine goes at 4:00 am, so perhaps that minimizes that occurrence, as theoretically the evaporation and refill should be at a minimum at that time (I think).

I thought I noticed that the water in my shower is softer some days than others (based on suds). Perhaps that has to do with where the softener is in its regen schedule.

I have a Whirlpool, going on 7.5 years. Will it indicate when it's kaput? Or am I on my own to figure that out? I imagine it's gradual?

It’s a gradual death. Just use your CH test kit to test right after regen (should be zero) and right before regen. If the water hardness is higher right before regen, then the resin is starting to lose capacity and you’ll have to adjust the regen cycle times (usually by recalculating reserve volume). I also periodically clean my resin with ResCare cleaner. It’s basically phosphoric acid and a detergent. Cleans out dirt and helps pull out any iron contamination. I do it maybe every other regen or every third regen. You just add the cleaner, about 1/2 cup in my system, to the brine tank just before regen.