Salt and grass (lawn, grow, plants, tolerant)

[caco54]

I have a water filter that uses salt. Somehow it ends up draining into the sump pump well and then is discharged out to my lawn along with the rain water coming from the leaders and gutters. Seems when the salty water hits the grass it kills it and I have a "death zone" on my lawn. Any ideas on that would grow facing that salty enviroment?

[J&Em]

It would be easier to make suggestions knowing where you live (USDA zone) and the type of soil you have as well as what grass you have.

It sounds like you have a softener that uses sodium chloride. Often the recommendation is to switch to a potassium chloride system. If you have the sodium system you can pick from lists of salt resistant plants and grasses for your area and hope the can handle the salinity. Sometimes using extra unsoftened water in addition to what is coming through the rain sources may be enough to moderate the toxic effect on the plant roots.

Here are a few places you can start with to find your answers.


MRWPCA Water Softener Salt Reduction Information

http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/files/librar...t%20Plants.pdf

Salinity Management Guide: Choose salt-tolerant plants

[TinaMcG]

Originally Posted by caco54

I have a water filter that uses salt. Somehow it ends up draining into the sump pump well and then is discharged out to my lawn along with the rain water coming from the leaders and gutters. Seems when the salty water hits the grass it kills it and I have a "death zone" on my lawn. Any ideas on that would grow facing that salty enviroment?

You have a water softener or water filtration system that sends the brine onto your property rather than into a municipal sewer system? It drains into the sump pit somehow? You need to figure out how all that works. That is an extremely important thing to know when you own property.

Get rid of the softener or filter system. Get rid of the source of the salt. Seriously, it is a completely unworkable situation. That is way too much salt for you to ever deal with effectively. We are on septic and looked into getting a softener for hot water. The plumber said it would be fine. I called our county environmental department and got a completely (and more accurate) take. There is SO much salt and it absolutely kills every type of vegetation. You will have a dead zone that just grows and grows. The setup you have now could even disqualify you from passing a home/property inspection or finding a buyer if you were to try to sell your house.

Our county environmental manager told me we could direct the brine into our septic field, because technically it isn't illegal. But he also said we would have to redirect it somewhere else when we decided to sell the house.

Nothing will grow in that dead zone, and it will only get worse the longer you keep allowing salty water to dump there.

[gonpostal]

Originally Posted by caco54

I have a water filter that uses salt. Somehow it ends up draining into the sump pump well and then is discharged out to my lawn along with the rain water coming from the leaders and gutters. Seems when the salty water hits the grass it kills it and I have a "death zone" on my lawn. Any ideas on that would grow facing that salty enviroment?

I know this is a lot of questions, but to better help you they are necessary.

Are you sure this is the scenario? How large is your sump pump well? Does the water softener regeneration discharge water, typically 40-70 gallons, run directly into the sump pump well? Do you know about how often it regenerates? How much salt are you using?

Usual discharge water salinity concentration varies from 0-7,000 ppm at the very upper range, for brief periods, during regeneration. Are you on septic? It could be that your percolation field is near your dead spot if your softener discharge water runs directly into your system.

As if that wasn't enough, sometimes water softeners are incorrectly connected to the entire water supply instead of just the inside hot water. Is your 'death zone' in just one area or is the entire lawn affected? Is the rest of the lawn healthy or are their yellow tips on the grass blades?