Recommendations on portable water softeners

[Joel Ashley]

I can finally report on our new On-the-Go softener.  I love it.  It cleans up hard water taste and even the residual soda taste my wife was complaining about after dewinterizing 10 days ago.  We are near Crater Lake and in high mineral well country.  This morning's showers had plenty of lather, perhaps better than at home.

Rather than "permanently" hook the tank up, which would require some panel cutting for hose routing, I just store it in an adjoining opening in the water bay so it's handy.  At the campsite it's easy to hook up to park water and leave outside semi-hidden alongside a slideout.  Then upon leaving I switch the manifold valve over to tank fill, top off, and then disconnect hoses and lift the tank back into its bay where it stands upright.  If I want, I can open its valves and drain water weight out first, but even full it's not that heavy.

It's a great little device.

Joel

[Stan Simpson]

Update: We ordered the Watts Flow-Pur 10,000k unit. Since the coach is at our storage until Dec 1st when we leave for the big Florida adventure, I have the water softener at home. I think perhaps my previous water stick bit the dust because the resin froze.

I rigged up a spot inside the bay next to the water bay for the softener to travel and store upright.

Today, was the big test. Rockford has some of the hardest water known to mankind. I hooked it up to a garden hose for the intake, and just opened the outflow valve and let the water run down my driveway for 15 minutes. Prior to running the water, I tested the water coming out of my outside spigot, and it was max hard..using the provided test strips, the water tested at 25 gpg and 425 ppm, the highest on the scale. After running for 15 minutes, I tested again and the water tested a 0 gpg and 0 ppm...SOFT as a baby's behind!

Can't wait to hit the road!

Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions and help.

Stan

[Stan Simpson]

Update:

We left home on Dec 1 but didn't use the new softener until we were out of freezing weather. Stared using it on Dec 4th..so its been 3 weeks. This softener is better than the one in our sticks & bricks. Nice soft water, and still no need to re-generate.

Very very satisfied with this product! Here is a pic of my set up.

[Jerry Carr]

Thanks for the update Stan we also just got the Watts softner and plan to use it as we head south and while we stay at Happy Trails.

[Dick Simonis]

Stan
Take a look at this site.  I use their softners.  I have a larger one at home for
 use in cleaning and filling my water tank.  The"mini" I take with me.  Easy regen process and can either use salt pellets or potassium which I prefer.

http://www.stainlesswaterfilters.com/waterfilters-s/1814.htm


Leah

I also was looking at this one but agree with Joel that the absence of tech data is disturbing.  I'm sure that a simple phone call would provide the information but aside from that,  the horizontal operation may cause what is called channeling at low flow rates.  This is an atypical design for resin based treatment devices and cause for concern.  I'm not sure that back-washing will "stir" the resin very effectively.

What I do like is their approach to regeneration.  Rather than open the unit and pour in salt they put the salt in the prefilter....this makes a lot of sense and should be adaptable to any portable unit.  When I get mine (whatever it is) I'm certainly going to look at using this procedure with either table salt or rock salt.  Easy to play with different combinations.  The whole purpose is to make a saturated brine solution and however that is accomplished will be effective.

Regarding the On the Go models, the lack of a flow restriction for regen and backwash would be a concern.  Regenerating resin effectively is very dependent on contact time not just time and these models depend on the operator to manually adjust the flow...not a great way to accomplish the objective.  Effective yes but prone to operator error.  Still this would be easy to retrofit with any number of devices.

[Joel Ashley]

I agree with you on the solution contact time factor, Dick, but the operator error factor is an unlikely one in either my or your case.

Joel

[Dick Simonis]

For those of you that are interested in more info on how softeners work and some of the fine points of generation and backwash I found a good explanation in the following document.

http://www.wqpmag.com/resin-regeneration-fundamentals

Now granted these little portable units are not the same as household or industrial installations, the principals are the same.  For our purposes the description of how the flow rates are determined and why they are important is spot on.  You do need to know the bed volume which is typically 1/3 to 1/2 ft3 in the portables. 

Some of the portable softeners call for back-washing every 2-3 months but I suggest that you consider doing it every regen for all the reasons mentioned in the document.  Like any flter media the beads will compact with use and failure to backwash will do a couple of things...none very good.  First, the resin will compact causing pressure drop to increase.  The higher the park water pressure the worse it will become.  Second is that the regen effectiveness will be compromised because, due to being compacted, the effective resin surface area is not exposed to the brine solution.

One work of caution on the backwash flow rate.  To high of a flow will not only expand the bed (good) but will agitate the resin and either blow it out, clog the stand pipe, or damage the media and create excessive fines (bad to real bad).

Dick

[Joel Weiss]

Nice article; thanks for sharing.  One thing that was clarified for me was how long to do the backflush.  The Watts softener instructions tell you to do the backflush at ~1 gal/min, but nowhere does it say how long to do it.  I'm currently in south Texas where the hardness is >25 grains/gal and softener performance is very important!