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Understanding a Water Softener System

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You may have noticed some thick, scaly lines appearing on some of your home’s appliances. These deposits can also be found inside your home’s water pipes and as a result, you can hear a gushing sound when opening your water taps. These are symptoms of a supply of hard water to your home. Hard water doesn’t mean something strong or powerful. Water containing excessive minerals such as calcium, magnesium and manganese is classified as hard water.

If your home is supplied hard water, you’ll need a system to soften it. A water softening system essentially removes those excessive minerals, leaving soft water behind. A water softening system is composed of many components that harmoniously work together to remove excessive minerals, while at the same time adding some salts to restore the balance of ions in the water to be used at home.

How does a water softener work?

The principle operation of a water softener is known as ion exchange. Simply put, the softening of water involves the replacement of extra magnesium and calcium ions with sodium ions, resulting to the softening of water. To have an understanding of the water softening arrangement, let’s first get familiar with its different components.

Mineral Tank: Most of the action takes place in this tank. When entering this tank, magnesium and calcium ions in water, carrying a positive charge, get attracted by beads having a negative charge.

Brine Solution: The mineral tank on its inside has another layer, known as the brine tank, which holds a brine solution having a concentration of potassium or sodium ions. In exchange of calcium and magnesium ions, the softer provides these ions to water for maintaining an ionic balance.

Control Valve: To regulate the flow and pressure of water entering or leaving the tank, a control valve is included in the system. After the completion of the process of ion exchange, excessive minerals are kept behind, whereas soft water gets discharged through the pipes.

The process of water softener regeneration

Water softeners can be considered as filters or devices that are incorporated in water pipes of a plumbing system. Since the replacement of ions inside the tank necessitates the presence of salts plus minerals, we need to regularly regenerate the water softener to maintain the concentration of brine solution. Moreover, the tanks need to be cleaned without interrupting the delivery of soft water. Generally, the process of regeneration is automatic after you have setup the time limit. Most often, the maintenance of water softeners is carried through at night because it is convenient to temporarily stop delivering soft water. At the end of each service, the system resets for proper functioning once again.

The Different Types of Water Softeners

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Water softeners use methods that reduce the magnesium and calcium content present in the water. There are other water softeners that also reduce iron and manganese. These minerals are known to cause hard water, which is undesirable to most people due to various reasons. Though hard water may not be harmful to a person’s health, it can cause problems when it comes to cleaning surfaces. Softening your home’s water may address this problem.

Hard water contains metal ions that react when used with soaps by preventing them from making more lather and letting them leave a noticeable ring on surfaces, usually seen in the bathtubs that use hard water. Magnesium and calcium alike form deposits on areas where hard water is used for a long time. These deposits can also accumulate on things made from metal, like pipes, sink faucets, shower heads, pots and pans, and inside coffee pots. Extreme cases can even allow build-up to destroy equipment, since it acts as a thermal insulator that can possibly overheat metal tools.

Some of the most common forms of water softeners used in households are devices made from ion-exchanging resin. Water softeners are available in 3 main types, depending on the salt that they use, namely: hydrogen, sodium and potassium. They consist of a resin bed through which water flows. Since the resin has a negative charge, it binds to the metal ions with a positive charge found in hard water. Hydrogen, univalent sodium or potassium are particularly used in the resin, which exchanges with divalent elements such as calcium and magnesium ions. This means that when calcium and magnesium are removed from the water, they are replaced by hydrogen, sodium or potassium.

In the long run, these water softeners will get used up because they release the hydrogen, sodium or potassium molecules into the water as it flows through. However, the resin can be restored by allowing some brine to pass through the resin. There are different kinds of brine that can be used, based on the type of resin – like hydrochloric acid refreshing hydrogen, sodium chloride refreshing sodium and potassium chloride refreshing potassium resin.

After these brines have been used, they can result to problems in the environment when discharged in large quantities. For this reason, several regions need huge water softening plants to retrieve the brine so it can be properly disposed. Resin water softeners have this one side effect, which is, they allow water to be loaded with sodium, especially when the water is very hard from the beginning. During the process of water softening, they can add until 250 mg of sodium/liter to extra hard water.

There are three ways of regenerating water softeners: by means of a meter, using a timer or doing it manually. The most popular and most efficient type of water softener is meter regeneration. This is done by tracking the amount of water being used. Once it is set, the meter depends on the number of people using the water and the hardness of the water. Timer regeneration works on a set schedule, like for example, once a week. Though timer systems are cheaper than meter systems in terms of set-up, they are less efficient in using salts. On the other hand, manual regeneration is done by letting the user regenerate the softener whenever needed. It does not make use of any automated tracking device. While this type of softener is both cheap and efficient, it is only suitable for softening small amounts of water.