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Our Purpose

Our purpose is simple:  FIGURE OUT IF CATALYTIC MEDIA WATER SOFTENERS WORK WELL

This blog is dedicated to documenting our test of a catalytic salt free water softener in real-life, very hard water conditions.  We want to know if this device can be used as a replacement to the conventional salt-using ion exchange systems that have been sold for decades.  Through our experiment we hope to show that a catalytic salt free water softener can provide most, if not all, of the benefits of a salt-using system.  We hope to show this because a salt-using water softener is bad for a number of reasons:

  1. The salt they discharge to the environment is damaging
  2. You have to carry heavy bags of salt
  3. Every time they regenerate, they waste a lot of water to drain
  4. They can be noisy
  5. They can be difficult to program properly
  6. They break down

Various types of salt free water softeners have been on the market in North America for about 5 years.  These include magnetic, electro-magnetic, and catalytic media systems.  After extensive research into the three technologies we decided that the catalytic media type showed the most promise.  Once this was determined, we decided to go with the Filtersorb SP3 media as it was WQA certified to NSF 61 and the manufacturer supported it well with service and documentation.  So, this blog focuses on the installation, testing, and results achieved with this exciting new technology.

Here's some more about the people running this experiment.

Here's some more info & pictures of the salt free water softener.

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