The Lord and Lady Vor will soon be moving into a home of our very own, in a land of “very hard water” that also comes chlorinated. And, having just come back from a home show where there were several different treatment options, verying in operation from chemical reactions that I understood to stuff that sounded like ‘magic’, I am now completely confused.
Solution 1 seems to be basic water softener, but those don’t do anything about the chlorine. Sure, you can add a reverse osmosis system, but that’s just for your drinking water. I don’t really want to smell chlorine in my shower. Something like this seems to be $700 for the water softener, $300-$500 for the reverse osmosis unit.
Solution 2 seemed to be a “multi-stage water softener”, where a carbon filter takes out most of the bad (or bad tasting) stuff, and a typical water softening stage to get rid of the calcium and magnesium. These have the added “advantage” of costing twice as much.
But still not as much as solution 3, which, for $4000, “breaks the bonds of the H20 molecules. foreign particles entrapped by the water molecules become exposed to the open solution. Their surfaces become available as NUCLEATION points for the nearby CaCO3 molecules. The calcium molecules cluster together to form a microscopic seed crystal around the nucleation point. Technically this is referred to as ‘increased calite nucleation’.” (sales brochure).
This sounds like pseudo-science mumbo jumbo on their part (it also doesn’t help their base credibility with me when, on the front of the brochure, they declair that their product uses “No Magnets”), but I don’t know enough chemistry to comment further.
So, what works? What’s worth the money? Was the third solution completely full of it?
I used to live in a place with water hard enough to drive nails. Do yourself a favor, and learn from my very expensive mistakes.
Don’t buy a water softener from a hardware store. You’ll be sorry.
I eventually bought a softener from Culligan. It was about 1100 bucks installed. They also installed a big filter to protect the softener from any grunge which might migrate down the lines. Culligan broke this down into darned reasonable monthly payments for me, like 11 or 18 bucks a month. I paid the whole deal off in a few months anyway. The water was clear, tasted great, no smell, it worked like a charm. I know it’s supposedly not good to drink softened water, but I loved it. Also, make sure you can adjust the hardness of the water- if it’s an on or off proposition, you’ll often have water so soft you’ll never get the soap off your hands.
We eventually bought a water cooler and got home delivery of bottles for drinking. It was a little spendy, but they also delivered the salt for the softener free. I think the package deal ended up being about 35 bucks a month, and the softener had a lifetime guarantee, which we transferred when we sold the house. Any good water-treatment company will sell you these items, not just Culligan.
The injection system (option $4000) is one a friend of ours bought. This is really best if you have really, really rusty water. It will drop all the rust out of the water instantly. If your water is just hard and chlorinated, a softener is probably best.
And filter filter filter! I had, at one time, three filters- a string wound prefilter for the softener, a BIG whole house activated charcoal filter,(this will remove most of the chlorine smell) and an undersink taste filter. I changed them all every two weeks regularly(our water was really bad)and had no trouble after that.
http://www.realgoods.com also sells tap filters and filter balls you can put under the tap in the bathtub, or attach to the shower fitting… the one I think was 40$ and lasts about a year for a family of 4. We have one in our master bath and use it occasionally… it just happened that after I bought the damn thing, they finished the “loop” in the plumbing system in our village (yeah yeah, complete with bark huts ;)) and instead of it being flushed back through the pipes at night and therefore having superstrong concentrations of chlorine at random points during the day -it flushes through.
We went with a brita filter on the sink for drinking water, but it’s costly to replace the filter every month… the kitchen aid fridge we bought came with a filter and a sensor on it, and it works pretty well, so we’ll see how long that lasts.
Hard water sucks, but your water shouldn’t be too chlorinated. If it is, you may want to contact the water treatment facility. You may also want to find out what steps they are already taking to reduce the water hardness.
R.O. would be insanely expensive for drinking water (especially if you use it for all the water entering your house…including toilet, shower, dish/clothes washer)…plus R.O. may make the water TOO clean to drink (start leaching minerals out of your body).
Perhaps to install it. But then the upkeep will be the insanely expensive part.
Sounds a little more realistic, but very elaborate and expensive for a homeowner.
Yikes…some sales rep is waxing b.s. At best, it sounds like pH adjustment (messing with the H+ and OH- ratio) and then flocculation/precipitation/sedimentation (or filtration) to remove to particles. This would be complicated & expensive for a homeowner. For one thing, you’ll have sludge to deal with…your local trashman may not accept it and you wouldn’t want to toss it into your backyard.
snicker.
My advice…(1) call the water treatment facility to see what they are already doing to address water quality. (2) See what your neighbors are doing and what has worked for them. (3) Buy a filter unit that attaches to your faucet that you use for drinking water or for cooking. Deal with the rest as a fact of living in the area. (4) Or if the hard water is really a problem, then consider a water softener. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything that won’t be expensive & a maintenance headache when it comes to treating water “point of entry” (as it enters your house). It’s more manageable to treat at the “point of use” (your tap) but that won’t help with your chlorinated showers. Let us know what you decide!
I don’t think the third solution is outrageous. It sounds like they are precipitation the CaCO3 out – something your municipal water works may already be doing. It does sound to me, however, like a complete waste of money.
Tips:
** Don’t use a softening system if you or members of your family suffer from high blood pressure.
** Hard water is tasty water (in my experience). Chlorine-ey water is not.
** In all likelyhood, municipal water is safer and better for you than the stuff that comes in the bottles.
** Vinegar does wonders on hard water stains.
Good luck on the move and on the new house!