The Salt Free Water Softener Experiment

Well, this week was not so good on the toilet front and I'm beginning to feel as though I'm leading any of you readers out there on an up and down rollercoaster.  Really, I guess, all I can do is provide you with a week by week update of what's going on as unfortunately we do not have the resources to monitor hardness in the water. 

Wow - that was a long time between blogs - guess you could say I'm a bit embarrassed, but well, that's life I guess.  A bunch of stuff has gone on since I last posted including a two week trip to British Columbia (that was SOOOOOO incredible), a full week of water conferences, and well, a tonne of work!  Right, right, but my personal life is not of interest (nor very exciting I suppose), you

As a guy who sells water treatment equipment including salt-using water softeners of all stripes, I often get asked about the impacts of brine discharge to a septic system.  While I don't have any statistics at my fingertips, my experience suggests that a higher percentage of water softener purchasers are rural dwellers as compared to city dwellers.  As such, they have a septic system that ha

In 2003 the municipality of Santa Clarita in California imposed a ban on the installation of any salt-using water softener in response to increasingly high chloride levels in the Santa Clarita River.  Chloride levels were reaching a critical concentration that would begin to affect agricultural operations that used the water from the river as their primary irrigation source.

As I mentioned in my last post, we haven't noticed a lot of difference over the last week.  From what I understand about the technology, this seems to make sense.  Reid explained that because the technology works as a de-scaler, the hardness may in fact increase as the scale is removed from our pipes.  This correlates with a new taste we've observed in the water, slightly metallic.  We inst

Well, not too much to report in on today, things are pretty much status quo from last time I wrote.  So I thought I'd write a post about Tony's grape jelly.  Just to keep things interesting.  We grow grapes in our backyard and every year around this time Tony harvests them and makes amazing grape jelly.

I realized shortly after I blogged on the installation that I forgot to take a snapshot of the actual installation (must have been frazzled by the blinding good looks of the installers..........either that or the fact that I had a 30 lb baby hanging off my hip).

So, as gross as this sounds, I decided that I wouldn't clean my bathroom until I monitored what was going on.  Didn't want to get any false observations of removed scale!  Every other day I've gone at the toilet with a toilet brush only, just brushing at the stains on the toilet.  Now remember, previously I would scrub and scrub at these stains with vinegar and Borax to no avail - eventually

Just found this article from The Record (Kitchener Waterloo) outlining the impact of salt from water softeners on the Grand River:  "regional government estimates water softeners release 32,333 tonnes of salt into the Grand River each year"...it suggests that the impact could be as significant as road salt!  

Here's the link

Well, its in!  Reid and Greg (see photo below of installation team) made the trip to Kitchener and installed the salt free water softener in about an hour.  They were here for about 2 hours and in that time we caught up on family life, had some coffees and then switched to beer when Tony decided it was prudent to lug the old brine tank up the stairs......WITH the salt and water still inside!