While I agree with you on most of your comments, the interesting thing is that the methods of treatment really don’t differ that much when dealing with groundwater in terms of municipal versus home systems. I’ve designed “water softeners” for municipal well sites that had 1200-gpm flows and also did an evaluation and purchase of a softener for my 0.25-gpm house. One’s obviously a lot bigger than the other. As a comparison, the 1200-gpm system had four resin tanks that were each 9 feet in diameter and 12 feet high. You wanna talk regeneration wastes?
Water treatment generally is high maintenance.
Water softening is not. You are correct. Most water softeners are on city water. Just add salt. When the thing craps out (and you can get many years of service from a water softener) —just buy a new one for maybe $300.
However if you are on well water with sulpher and acidic water and possibly tannic water and clearwater iron water. --------equipment to treat that runs in the thousands of dollars and uses chorine and is VERY high maintenance. All that equipment works together----------the chemical feed pump, pumping highly corrosive to itself (if even the tiniest leak) chlorine, a holding tank, a water softener, (which will be destroyed if too much chlorine reaches it) an activated charcoal filter (which also will be destroyed if too much chlorine reaches it).
It all has to be watched like a hawk and checked and rechecked and readjusted at least weekly if not daily by the consumer.
If not done-------thousands of dollars of very expensive water treatment equipment can go down the tubes.
As said before-------if you can’t handle it-------live in the city.
I still think your theory of having to check equipment daily or weekly is absurd.
I would never recommend a chemical feed pump for a home owner. I can’t think of a situation where one is needed. There are better solutions for most problems. If chlorine is needed a closed pellet container needs service about over 6 months. I recommend the service be done by a professional but the average person is capable of doing it themselves if they can follow instructions and are very safety oriented.
It is not true that most water softeners are on city water. Unfortunately my google foo is weak; I could not find a site. In my experience I’ve seen far more water softeners in people’s homes for private water supplies rather then public.
If your buying 300 water softeners I’d expect them to crap out frequently.
Sulfur can be solved by the above chlorinator followed by an activated carbon filter. When you smell chlorine you change the filter normally every 2 months.
Acidic water can be neutralized with a neutralizer. All it requires is someone adds limestone when needed, frequency varies people need to do/have this done usually between 1 and 6 months.
Tannic water is something I have very little experience with. Only saw it once in a drilled well. It’s occasionally found in dug or driven point wells that are contaminated with surface water. I’ve seen R/O units used to treat this. R/O units require service every six months or so.
Clear water iron is solved by your $300 dollar softener.
I don’t know why anyone would put a chlorinator inline before a softener.
Destroyed is an interesting term for the carbon filter. Most people use terms like exhausted of depleted. As the purpose of the carbon filter is to take out the chlorine. When its ‘destroyed’ you replace it.
If you have equipment that needs to be watched like a hawk I’d say be done with it and replace it with something that works well without contant supervision there is a solution to almost every problem.
Are you trying to scare the city folk out of living in the country?