In todays L.A. Times is an article on a proposal to ban conventional water softeners that discharge salt into sewer lines because it makes cleaning and reuse of sewage too difficult and expensive. They say its an increasingly crucial source of irrigation water in drought plagued California.

I've got a plumbed in Heat exchanger with no room under the sink for RO let alone much else. The Rayne water softener tank is on the other side of the house and supplies the whole house. Any suggestions on what to do if this bill passes?

Take a deep breath. When Rayne and Culligan's lobbyists are done with the bill, I doubt you will have to do anything.

I talked to the folks at Rayne and what I'm understanding is this affects those that use a tank system with a drain to dump the old salt when the tank is recharged. I've got one of those self contained tanks that are swapped out every month or two. Still, that means that the plant is dumping the brine solution at their plant. True enough about lobbyists, I just like to know my options ahead of time, when I can.

You may want to consider a softener cartridge such as the ones from chris coffee and freshwater systems. They are very small and you just throw away the small filter when done thus avoiding discharging salt down the drain. I do agree with marshall however in that by the time all the different divisions of gov't get done talking about flushing salt down the drain (and in the process flushing taxpayer money down the drain) nothing will come of it and it will be status quo for your machine.

Bluegrod wrote:You may want to consider a softener cartridge such as the ones from chris coffee and freshwater systems. They are very small and you just throw away the filter when done thus avoiding discharging salt down the drain.

Good choice where the water tastes and smells good, but not for L.A. Our tap water tastes terrible, which is why most people have bought bottled drinking water here for decades. To run tap water through a coffee machine here, you really need something more like the Bunn EQ 17, which both softens and filters the water: http://www.bunn.com/pages/commercl/6filter/filter_main.html#EQ&ED17.

Of course, if money and space are no object, there is Cirqua's new "AB Formulator," which allows you to dial in your preferred TDS on the fly: http://www.cirqua.com/prod-abformulator.asp.

There are now a number of units on the market that use a technology called template-assisted crystallization. They all are packaging media sold under the name next-ScaleStop by a company called Next Filtration Technologies. You can read about it here. I'm not aware of any studies that compare the taste of coffee made with water thus treated with coffee made with more conventionally-treated water. But it might be worth exploring.

Best,
David

Thanks for the links guys. The Bunn would be the easiest to retrofit and the Next Filtration doesn't show any physical products that I could find. David, I believe there have been a few postings here about the fall off in taste with the loss of minerals. I find it to be a balancing where you find what's "acceptable" for your taste while trying to protect your equipment. Besides hauling that heavy hunk of metal somewhere else to work on. I've already discovered that the external tank/bucket flushing method doesn't work for my plumbed machine as the motor "caves" (correct term?). Maybe I have to buy a flo-jet just for the occasional de-scale.

edwa wrote:The Next Filtration doesn't show any physical products that I could find. David, I believe there have been a few postings here about the fall off in taste with the loss of minerals.

Both Watts and Pelican, for sure, have products based on the Next Filtration technology; they've been mentioned here before. As to taste, the minerals are there, but in crystalline form. It's entirely possible, since Next specifies inlet water with a minimum Ph of 6.5, that the acidic environment of a coffee bed would make them come back into solution and the extraction would be fine, but someone would have to run the experiment to see. Maybe someone has? I'd call Next Filtration and ask them these things.

Best,
David

DavidMLewis wrote:There are now a number of units on the market that use a technology called template-assisted crystallization. They all are packaging media sold under the name next-ScaleStop by a company called Next Filtration Technologies. You can read about it here. I'm not aware of any studies that compare the taste of coffee made with water thus treated with coffee made with more conventionally-treated water. But it might be worth exploring.

This sounds very promising. I'm sure they are lobbying away in Sacramento, too. But, as with the ion exchange systems, you also need filtration in L.A.

I live in San Diego where the water is at least as foul as LA. The softener system from Chris works just fine for me. I change my cartridge every year even though it is not necessary (the water is still fully softened as determined with test strips).

Most folks use a carbon filter cartridge after whatever softener they run. The carbon removes organics and particulates.

Remember that a softener (as opposed to a reverse osmosis system) only exchanges ions (largely removing calcium that forms scale and replacing it with sodium, or in some cases potassium). The total ionic strength of the water remains the same (therefore a TDS meter that is a conductivity bridge will show essentially no change following softening).

Softened water has remaining minerals and does not taste "flat" liked distilled water. Reverse osmosis water is very low in minerals and many (most?) folks use a calcite filter after the RO to add back some minerals.

Although I originally purchased my softener/filter system from Chris when I bought my Vivaldi, you can assemble a softener/filter system for very little money by purchasing the components at a local dealer. I have used the following for my replacement cartridges:

http://www.wateranywhere.com/

I have never used the new type of systems but am very interested in them.

Good luck,
Mark

MDL wrote:I live in San Diego where the water is at least as foul as LA. The softener system from Chris works just fine for me. I change my cartridge every year even though it is not necessary (the water is still fully softened as determined with test strips).

Most folks use a carbon filter cartridge after whatever softener they run. The carbon removes organics and particulates.

This can work, too. I wasn't meaning to tout all-in-one solutions like the Bunn filters as the only way to go. I just wanted to point out that softening only solves part of the problem in cruddy water locales.