Hard Water Solution?

[AustrianOak82]

Question around a solution for the hard/crappy water at my shop. I have a reverse osmosis system that I use to fill my steamer, bottles, etc but I am looking for something to handle the hard water line that runs to my power washer. Do I need a full blown water softener, or could I get away with one of the water purification systems sold on this site? Not sure I understand the difference in the two systems. We have very hard water, hard enough that if it is allowed to dry, I have to compound the spots away and even that sometimes doesn't work. Any suggestions?

[Setec Astronomy]

A water softener is an ion exchange system. It will exchange those hardness ions (dissolved minerals) in your water for sodium or potassium ions (which come from sodium chloride or potassium chloride salts used to regenerate the resin in the softener). The TDS remains ~the same, however the soft water spots will be much easier to remove. If you are handy you can buy a softener at Home Depot or Lowe's or Sears etc. and install it yourself.

Systems like the CR Spotless are similar in that they use a resin bed that the water flows through, but instead of exchanging the hardness ions, it removes them in a process known as deionization. The beauty of this is that you wind up with theoretically zero TDS...the downside is that once the resin is depleted it has to be discarded or recharged at an industrial location. Talk to your local water treatment companies (Culligan, etc.); as a commercial customer you should be able to rent a couple of deionizer tanks that should treat 1000 or more gallons each...when the first one is depleted, switch to the second and call them to come swap the dead one with a fresh one.

[craigdt]

Also interested in this topic.

Any way a person could build their own using the drinking water filters found at Home Depot, etc?

[Setec Astronomy]

Any way a person could build their own using the drinking water filters found at Home Depot, etc?

The hardness in the water can not be filtered out, it is not particles, it is dissolved minerals in ionic form...molecular scale. In the same way you can't filter out dissolved salt or sugar from water.

As mentioned, you can remove these ions through reverse osmosis, which in a way is filtration on a molecular scale, but it's a slow, inefficient process.