Water Softeners - Advice Sought

[IsaanT]

I am building a house in Roi Et province.  The water in our village is extracted from bore holes so is very hard.  I have two good wells on my land (see video of well number 1) and the water is crystal clear and has been tested and shown to be safe to drink although I will be running it through filters, just in case.  However, it's also very hard.

Being 400 metres from the main village, we do not have mains sewerage (the upsides include we can't hear the temple, the barking dogs and our current neighbour's loud music! 🙂).  I am concerned about using ion-exchange water softeners (the ones you fill with salt, and which I have used for most of my life in England) because I would be concerned about the brine discharge polluting the land.  I'd be interested to hear how other people have solved hard water problems.

Thanks in advance.
 

[Muhendis]

I've never heard of salt softeners before. I use a resin ion exchange softener.My water source used to be from a bore hole but it was way too hard even after the softener filter. 

Apparently, the best you can expect from a resin softener is a 10% improvement.

My hard water was causing serious plumbing problems so I reverted to my surface water well for all my needs.

The surface water is soft from source so the softener makes it super soft and saves a fortune in soap.

The resin softener does need to be rejuvenated occasionally (about every 18 months or more) with a brine solution but there seems to be no ill effects caused by the dumped brine.

 

[Yellowtail]

5 minutes ago, Muhendis said:

I've never heard of salt softeners before. I use a resin ion exchange softener.My water source used to be from a bore hole but it was way too hard even after the softener filter. 

Apparently, the best you can expect from a resin softener is a 10% improvement.

My hard water was causing serious plumbing problems so I reverted to my surface water well for all my needs.

The surface water is soft from source so the softener makes it super soft and saves a fortune in soap.

The resin softener does need to be rejuvenated occasionally (about every 18 months or more) with a brine solution but there seems to be no ill effects caused by the dumped brine.

 

You have the same type of softener the OP is describing.

 

The OP is not on a public sewer, and is concerned with the discharging the brine into the environment 

[Muhendis]

1 hour ago, Yellowtail said:

You have the same type of softener the OP is describing.

 

The OP is not on a public sewer, and is concerned with the discharging the brine into the environment 

 

1 hour ago, Muhendis said:

there seems to be no ill effects caused by the dumped brine.

For clarification.

The brine is dumped onto the lawn and what passes as flower beds. The grass fails to turn a funny colour and other plants seem to be unaffected.

I've had no feedback from the ground dwelling insects.

It should be noted that the amount of brine is about 100 Litres. 

When the brine is dumped the solution gets weakened by the fresh water used to flush the brine after it's rejuvenation task has been completed.

Public sewer? There is no such thing as a public sewer where I am. Everyone around here has a septic tank.

[IsaanT]

21 minutes ago, Muhendis said:

 

For clarification.

The brine is dumped onto the lawn and what passes as flower beds. The grass fails to turn a funny colour and other plants seem to be unaffected.

I've had no feedback from the ground dwelling insects.

It should be noted that the amount of brine is about 100 Litres. 

When the brine is dumped the solution gets weakened by the fresh water used to flush the brine after it's rejuvenation task has been completed.

Public sewer? There is no such thing as a public sewer where I am. Everyone around here has a septic tank.

Hi Muhendis,

Thanks for your responses.  As @Yellowtail mentioned, we are talking about the same thing.

Something you said did make me take note - you say that you regenerate your resin every 18 months.  I've had several different resin (ion-exchange) water softeners in the UK, as have other members of my family, and all of us live (or lived, in my case) in hard water areas.  They need regenerating every few days when used in a typical domestic setting where everyone's bathing or showering every day.  They typically output 100-150 litres of brine, as you say.  I used to use about 25kg of salt every 4-6 weeks.  Mine were automatic and would initiate a regeneration cycle after a certain amount of water consumption (I never knew how much - it was hard-coded, according to the size of the resin canister).  I'm wondering if this might be behind your observation that there would only be a 10% improvement.

Since writing, I visited my local Home Pro and saw a Mex 1044 model resin automatic water softener, which looks just the ticket.  Compared with all the water softeners I have become familiar with over the years in the UK, the resin canister is huge.  UK water softeners typically have a resin canister about 30cm high and 20 cm in circumference.  The Mex canistor was like a big welding oxy-acetylene tank - 25.4 cm in diameter and 151cm tall, according to the specs.  This can only be a good thing.

 

I'm coming round to the idea of feeding the brine discharge into the soakaway downstream of one of my septic tanks.  My builder has suggested two underground concrete ring stacks for the soakaway but I might double them to four, to be on the safe side.

I was also concerned about the possibility of the salt dissolving into the local water table and affecting the two wells on my land but then I remembered that my wells are on underground streams so any salt that might reach them will be washed away anyway.
 

[Muhendis]

3 hours ago, IsaanT said:

you say that you regenerate your resin every 18 months

Surface water is rainwater that has soaked into the ground picking up all sorts of unmentionable rubbish on the way.  As you know, rainwater is inherently softer than a babies rear end and needs only minimal softening. So it is not unreasonable that the resin needs only occasional rejuvenation.

Depth of my surface water well is 5.5 Metres which is enough for most of the year. Any shortfall is made up from the local lake filtered and pumped from a government pump house which is just down the road from my house.

Your description of the Home Pro filter tank sounds like the sort I use. I have two with carbon filter media and one with resin. Non of them are automatic.

3 hours ago, IsaanT said:

my wells are on underground streams

This is a very interesting situation.

How far away are these wells from your point of use? 

Rather than use the borehole water which will not be so good from a hardness point of view, could you not route some of your underground stream water to your filter/pump house? (I am making quite a few assumptions here.)

Point about the 10% improvement figure I mentioned.

This is a 10% reduction in hardness. This translates into something like:-  If you needed 100 bars of Imperial Leather per month without the resin filter the you would need only 90 bars of same when using resin filter. 

This 10% figure comes from a water supply equipment company here in Buriram.

Have you had your borehole water tested?

 

[IsaanT]

Apologies, I didn't note that you were using surface water.

My boreholes are about 35 and 60 metres away from my house.  The boreholes are both fed by the underground streams.  I don't have any other sources of water on the land.

I tested the borehole water for 16 different properties (total alkalinity, carbonate, hardness, cyanuric acid, copper, mercury, total chlorine, free chlorine, bromine, nitrate, nitrite, iron, chromium, lead and fluoride) and it was low or normal for all except hardness.
 

[NedR69]

How many GPG is your water?  If you have never tested the water quality hardness, you can't know for certain what you need, not even the size of the water softener IF your water quality needs it. GPG or grains per gallon.  Cheap test strips (from a fresh sealed pack) are good to show what your hardness is. 

 

A softener only removes calcium and magnesium.  All the other junk you gotta filter it and maybe treat it.

[IsaanT]

I used a new pack of test strips for the test (see below).  The hardness was at the highest level on the scale, to nobody's surprise.

 

As described above, the tests showed the water is already drinkable (and tastes very pleasant) but I will be building a large gravel, sand and activated charcoal filter, just in case.

As for the size of the water softener, a large family model (such as the Mex 1044) will be fine.  The automatic regeneration cycles are triggered by water usage, e.g. every 2,000 litres, so a smaller one would also work but might regenerate more frequently, e.g. every 1,000 litres, due to the reduced resin capacity and surface area.