Dionized Water

[QuickCln]

I have a question about DI water. I read on some forums that softwater will work like DI water to reduce spotting, but this is a lie. I bought a 200 dollar portable water softener to be used with a pressure washer. Although it is nice and brought my 17 gpg\250ppm water down to 20 ish ppm, I still get spotting almost as badly as before. The softwater has done wonders to increase snowfoam volume thru my mtm foam cannon, so i think I will keep it. I plan on implementing a series of Y valves so that I can choose between:

1) Hard water
2) softwater
3)Softwater + DI water inline

So I went ahead and purchased a portable DI tank to be used inline with the water softener.

Who here has knowledge of these things? Does using a water softener extend the life of the expensive DI resin? I plan to use DI only as a last rinse because its so expensive. The one i bought claims to give 180 gallons at 250ppm. Which means if I use a 1.79 gpm spx3000 (some claim that in real world use, it only uses 1.1 gpm which is actually a good thing in this case) AND if I do my final rinse in under 3 minutes, then I would use a total of 5.37 gallons. Ofcourse I would lose some water thru the PW system and miscellaneous, so Ill probably use 6 gallons or so a wash. This means my DI should last me thru 180/6=30 washes.

Refill resin costs 90 bucks shipped for the unit so if i get 180 gallons of water, I am paying about 50 cents per gallon which is only twice the cost of drinking water where I live.

Please share your opinions, I am also new here but have been a long time lurker. Thanks!

[RaskyR1]

Water softeners only exchange calcium and magnesium ions with sodium ions and won't lower your TDS, so my understanding is that it's not going to help you get more life out of your resin.


You can buy bulk resin from windows101 for much less.
Windows101 LLC (http://www.windows101.com/shop/product_info.php?cPath=74_176&products_id=1465)

[QuickCln]

Thanks rasky! Thats what I thought. Same number of gallons. I read on here that oldmodman put somekind of filter before his cr spotless system that extended the life of the resin. What kind of dionizing filter is that?

Anyways 160 bucks for 1 cubic feet sounds good. How much more resin is that than the 4 bag pack you get from costco for 150 dollars?

[oldmodman]

I just bought a medium sized inline single tube resin filter.
It takes the "hard hit" from my filthy Los Angeles city water and as soon as it is shot I replace it. I am using it to prevent the worst of the contaminants from reaching my big two tube water filter that I got from Costco.

This filter,
Water Softening Cartridge – Pure Water Products, LLC (http://www.purewaterproducts.com/products/fc024)
and then get whatever color tube to put it in from them. (clear, blue white, etc.)

[7.3powerstroke]

You can also take a look at reverse osmosis. Im not sure how it compares with DI but i have RO and love it

[RaskyR1]

Thanks rasky! Thats what I thought. Same number of gallons. I read on here that oldmodman put somekind of filter before his cr spotless system that extended the life of the resin. What kind of dionizing filter is that?

Anyways 160 bucks for 1 cubic feet sounds good. How much more resin is that than the 4 bag pack you get from costco for 150 dollars?

A cubic foot of resin should refil the DIC-20 (3) times, according to the cubic foot drum CR sells. I've ordered 2 from windows101 now and I'm pretty sure that's what I was getting from one. It is a pain having to scoop out the resin though and the pre-measured bags would be nice.

[QuickCln]

I ended up buying the dic-20. from craigslist off a guy with a cubic ft of resin for 300 bucks.

And you are right, the dic-20 according to the site holds .33 cubic feet of resin. so you can fill it up 3 times with 1 cubic ft resin bag.

so windows101 has the cheapest price for resin at 160 shipped (free shipping on orders over 100). so thats where Ill order them. But what I learned recently is that my calculations were wrong. i do not have 250ppm water. I have a true tds of 450ppm.... The water hardness kit i bought only measures calcium and some other minerals but doesn't give a good reading. When I tested my water with a tds meter its almost double that so that doubles my cost per gallon...

Still, I should get 172 gallons out of the dic-20 and with 1 cubic feet of resin I should have three times that amount before having to reorder... which should give me 86 rinses, assuming each rinse uses 6 gallons of di water. If I do a weekly wash, This could last upwards of 1.2 yrs.

So the cost of doing this DI thing is roughly 133/yr.

Something to consider for us HIgh tds guys.


I am thinking of chemically recharging the resin, so I wont feel guilty about using DI water. I read that the cations and anion resins can be seperated and placed into seperate cartridges for faster recharging later on.

Any thoughts?

[medicscott]

I live in Northern Massachusetts in the sticks where it should be a crime to drink the water the town allows. I started questioning my mental sanity when I would wash my black car. Every time I washed I was there for 2+ hours just getting water spots off the car. After installing a Griots Garage Deionizer I have had maybe 3 spots since. It's night and day and worth every single penny. I don't care what the cost is to not have to worry about this problem anymore. Can't speak for the inline system you have but to me it sounds like more trouble than it's worth. Just run the deionizer and call it a day.

[swanicyouth]

I live in Northern Massachusetts in the sticks where it should be a crime to drink the water the town allows. I started questioning my mental sanity when I would wash my black car. Every time I washed I was there for 2+ hours just getting water spots off the car. After installing a Griots Garage Deionizer I have had maybe 3 spots since. It's night and day and worth every single penny. I don't care what the cost is to not have to worry about this problem anymore. Can't speak for the inline system you have but to me it sounds like more trouble than it's worth. Just run the deionizer and call it a day.


Well said.

[QuickCln]

Just as an update to this thread, I've washed my car roughly once per week, and I only use the DI water as a final rinse and all is well and still going strong.

This is using the the dic-20 cr spotless and sunjoe spx3000 pressure washer. I dont use a water softener.

I am so far 4 months into using it together and it is still reading 000ppm coming down from 450ppm tds.

Best purchase combination ever, not sure how people washed their cars without spotless water!