Portable water softener and RODI?

[SandJ]

When talking with one of the rodi manufactures at MACNA, it was recommended to use a water softener along with the RODI.

Our water supply line enters up through the ground and into the front of our house, so there is no place to tie in a whole house water softener.

I can tie into where the cold water enters one of the hot water heaters in the garage. So the water softener would only be for the RODI unit.

I bought a portable water softener that has a standard water hose fitting in and out. It is made to use with an RV which is originally why I bought it. But I was thinking it may work for the RODI instead.

Any thoughts on this?

 

[DCR]

Water softeners simply replace calcium and magnesium ions for sodium ions. There is no real reduction in TDS. I don't see much advantage putting one in front of an RO, unless your water is very hard and it allows you to run at a lower reject rate without scaling in the RO. An RO can reject bi-valent ions like calcium and magnesium more effectively than sodium, so I would expect the softener will also decrease the life of your DI resin.

The resin in that portable softener is also going to require replacement or regeneration fairly frequently.

 

[SandJ]

We do have fairly hard water. Maybe that is why they were saying it would improve the waste water ratio.

I think this system makes 1600 gallons before needing to be reloaded.

 

[piranhaman00]

I just did some reading on this as I moved to a new state. The water softener won’t lower TDS but it will make it easier for the RO membrane to remove the sodium ions vs whatever was replaced by Na. However it is then more difficult on the DI resin to remove the remaining ions.

I think I’m some cases the softener would be very beneficial, but I’m same cases be of no help and/or just make DI run out faster.

 

[Samantha Nichols]

My husband and I are RVers fulltime. We are traveling out west and have encounter that every campground we are staying at has extremely hard water. Of course we all know the lime damage using hard water over time can do to the coach and especially to the electric hot water heater. So, I decided to buy a water softener system that is Condition M7002. The softener has been in operation now for one full month in this hard water environment and it has exceeded our expectations. We have a washer and dryer, dishwasher and use the shower in our coach and after a full months operation I had to regenerate it for the first time today. Regeneration was also a consideration because it states you need to run fresh water through the unit for 20 minutes to rinse the salt out of it and I was concerned about wasting water, but again I was very pleased to see that do to the units design it uses very little water to regenerate. If your considering purchasing this unit I hope this review helps.