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I've been seeing the ads for Easy Water soft water conditioners. Non-Chemical Commercial & Industrial Water Treatment Systems
It sounds like something designed to seperate people from their money, but I thought I'd toss it out here to see if anyone had any experience with them.
I like the ease of installation, rather than dig up my yard and driveway to instal the more common types.
It could be bogus, it could be gold...What say you..?
They add 7.85 mg/l of sodium to the softened water per grain per gallon of 'hardness' removed. If you check the labels on foods, you'll see that in most cases you get much less sodium in roughly a quart of your softened water than say a slice or two of white bread etc..
PWT (physical water treatment) or magnets don't work to give you the same effects of softened water. In most cases they don't stop hard water scale build up or remove it.
Salt Water softeners do not stop hard water scale from forming or remove existing scale, they only slow down the formation of scale. I have one of those EasyWater systems and it did in fact remove the scale that had built up on my dishwasher walls and my shower head(which at one point was plugging the holes of the head itself). It does not give you the same "benefits" like slippery feeling water, which truthfully some people do like but I am not one of those. From my experience with both a salt softener and this new water conditioning product they both provide different results and it all depends on what you are looking for. I myself was more concerned with protecting my water using appliances than I was about the feel of the water or the health issues.
I've been selling and servicing water softeners and other water treatment equipment for 21 years.
A correctly sized and set up softener removes hardness which prevents scale formation that is caused by calcium and/or magnesium hardness but not any scale caused by chlorides and/or sulfates or high TDS.
Softened water removes hardness scale by dissolving it back into the water which makes that water hard until the scale is removed; such as forms inside a water heater.
I have seen a number of anti scale and descaling devices, along with magnets, and the ion and other types like Easywater. Only two electronic types did anything to improve the water but they left a whitish powdery film everywhere the water was left to dry on any surface. The women in the homes hated it, it was like talcum powder all over the kitchen sink and showers etc..
Wouldn't salt be a chloride? Salt softened water removes the scale from inside of a scaled up water heater?
Your right about my EasyWater though, it does not remove the mineral from the water and when it does dry the mineral and whatever else is in the water is in fact left behind. I will say this though and to be quite honest I am not sure if I believe this because I was told this when I purchased, but the spots that are left behind are easily wiped away...as long as I don't let them sit for a week. My wife was not ecstatic over the spots because she assumed they would be rid of but she was excited when we got our water pressure back.
Salt is sodium chloride. Salt substitute is potassium chloride. Water is hydrogen and oxygen and so on.
All cation resin water softening resins are in the sodium form, and cation resin is used to remove positive charged ions like calcium, magnesium, ferrous iron, manganese etc. etc.. It uses only the sodium or potassium part, not the chlorides which go through the resin bed to drain.
All waters contain some chlorides, sulfates etc. etc. and to remove them, you must use an anion, positive charged resin. They remove negative charged ions.
Yes, softened water dissolves hard water scale. So does water that has been distilled or deionized (mixed bed cation and anion resins) or run through a Reverse Osmosis unit. So does an acidic, low pH water. Man has been using Zeolite for ion exchange for a hundred years and man made resins since WWII.
If you had a pressure loss across a water softener, it was blocked up somewhere or like most, it was undersized for your peak demand flow rate that it was supposed to treat.
I do understand that DI and distilled water both remove existing scale, but salt softened water while it can at times remove existing scale does not always remove existing scale or prevent new scale from forming. This being due to undersized for peak performance or not I do not know, but I have commercial buildings that were running softeners for years(since their inception) and during some remodeling had a few feet of copper plumbing removed and replaced. Upon inspection there was in fact scale built up in the pipe. While it was not a tremendous amount, there was still scale in the pipe. Obviously if scale was building up at whatever pace it could not at the same time be removing existing scale, right?
Very probably your softeners were not sized or set up for the peak demand gpm of the building but... hardness is not the only thing found in water that will cause scale. Chlorides, sulfates and high TDS etc. will too.
So how do you know what type scale you were seeing?
If you didn't test it or have a lab test it, you are assuming it is from hardness but it may not be and you're blaming a softener. Soft water, that with 0 gpg of hardness in it, dissolves hardness scale and prevents any hardness scale from forming in the system past the softener.
At the same time, a thin layer of scale inside copper tubing is a good thing, it protects the water from corroding the copper and causing pin hole leaks and actually, some water companies add chemicals to cause that scale build up so they can meet the EPA's Lead and Copper Rules testing.
I did not have it tested as that was not an issue I was immediately concerned with.
I thought that pin hole leaks in cooper tubing can be caused by the air that is trapped between the scale not the actual scale itself...is this not correct? What chemicals are added to cause the scale build up, soda ash?
I did not have it tested as that was not an issue I was immediately concerned with.
I thought that pin hole leaks in cooper tubing can be caused by the air that is trapped between the scale not the actual scale itself...is this not correct? What chemicals are added to cause the scale build up, soda ash?
Could be. I mix soda ash in my drilling fluids in the "silly sand".
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