Well Water Softener Alternative

[Brandon]

So as you may have guessed from the title I have a question about water softeners and being as we are a community of individuals from all walks of life I thought I'd throw it out here.

I have a house that is suppled water from a 400ft deep drilled well, it has that has a slow recharge time. In side the house I have two 200gal bulk tanks that fill from the well after passing through a chlorine injection system, that go to a pressure tank and another holding tank that feed a whole house filter that then goes into a Water Softener and a Carbon filter.

The softener is set to flush and recharge every 8 days and the carbon filter is like every 800gallons. The problem is when the Softener recharges and flushes my well cant keep up with the demand and runs "Dry" (pumptech box tips to keep well pump from burning out )prompting me to interrupt the cycle on the softener and turning the system off for 8-10 hours to refill the well and replenish the water lost from the bulk tanks. The well pump is set to replenish after about 40 gallons of use and the softener uses so much water that it will call on the pump 2 times to fill the tank and leave it one toilet flush away from refilling for a 3rd time.

Are there any well or water guys here that know of an alternative to a salt softener tank ? my well water is hard and has a lot of sulfur.

[Shaftski]

any system that removes heavy sediment is going to need a flush cycle for maintenance and waste water as a result. or produce a bunch of waste water as it actively cleans like RO systems.

both my conditioner and whole house filter waste a lot of water but the water that comes out the faucet is crystal clear.

it's a tough situation to be in if your well can't produce a good consistent flow rate.

sediment filters before the conditioner can help keep the conditioner cleaner longer and extend times between condition cycles, but those cycles will still need to run.

[XEMON]

I'm not a well water guy, but I'm the ozone and UV guy (industrial, mostly food and bio lab).
there aren't much alternatives to salt softener, but if it's taking too much water, you may be able to (depending on your softener):
- reduce Regen flow - reduce Regen time and increase frequency

Other idea might be to setup a buffer tank. Bore Regen, fill the buffer tank and pump from there for the Regen.

How is your system controled?
Do you have plc or just the timer/,flow meter mounted on the softer?

I'll reach out to a college or 2 who are more knowledgeable about softener and RO/DI than I am.

[Brandon]

Here’s the set up

[XEMON]

You're gonna be super limited in what you can actually do with this stup ... They are super reliable but you don't have much control ...

[pintbuster]

Have you tried bypassing it?
I got rid of mine at my last house and barely noticed.

[Pyrate Jim]

A couple years ago, we had people come in and test. We wanted cleaner water, that's all.
Ended up building a shed to house all the "upgrades" that included a water softener that recharges at certain time or volume presets.
The entire system is wired, and one of the presets will shut off if flow-rate drops and prevent a recharge dump from draining too much at once.
Expensive? Yes. And that's without bulk tanks for backup.
Worth it? Time will tell. Even after the initial cost, there is still upkeep and power requirements to pay for.
Personally? I don't notice a big difference between House water and what I use to irrigate my garden using a hand pump.
Alternatives? Beyond the obvious "deal with it or pay for it" sarcasm, I would say you need to increase flow.

Was your well drilled with a rotary impact drill? I've seen those dealt with when they close the "vessels" of water coming into the well.

[Paintslinger16]

I would guess they blocked a ton of incoming water at 400 feet that is super deep, and it just doesn’t fill up.
I cant imagine they pounded a 400 foot well.
The only well I actually drilled, I couldn’t get the rotary in time the pounder went to 200 feet and didn’t get much water. I couldn’t afford to go deeper, I spent 3 days flushing water into and then pumping it back out. I ended up with a amazing supply, and recovery rate but it was me and dad, out there not the well driller.

[Brandon]

I don't know how it was drilled, we bought the house 3 years ago and were now dealing with it.

[Paintslinger16]

Have you thought of Hydrofracture? You could deal with the lack of water issue and that would solve some issues.

[Brandon]

Yes we have considered it, I need to talk more to the well people.

[Grendel]

Be careful with hydrofracking your well, it can just as easily take your kind of working well and destroy it just as well as fix it. If you are considering going this direction plan ahead and set aside the money to drill a fresh well. Plan for the worst and hope for the best type of situation. We looked into this with our last house and all 3 of the well companies we talked to basically said hydrofracking can work but the risk to our well was 50/50. We opted to not frack our well because we really never felt we had a volume problem that we could not deal with being empty nesters. We just started stockpiling money anticipating in the future we would have to drill a new well.

[Paintslinger16]

There is always some risk, can’t deny that. I have did it twice though and for less then 2 grand, I got the results I wanted.

[dano_____]

I haven't dealt with wells, but I used to make water filters for GE. They were the pre-filters for RO systems that we also made. You can get different size(max size of material allowed through) and set up you depth filter with a progressive setup to catch a majority of the sediments. These are relatively cheap filter and filter housings that will just use pump pressure to go through. You can get all the way down to half micron level filters.

[XEMON]

I'm not a well water guy, but I'm the ozone and UV guy (industrial, mostly food and bio lab).

here are the ones I'm use to see/work with; for reference, the fiber vessel is 7'6" tall and the system is designed to spit out 100gpm after the DI, so the softener needs to handle a minimum of 250gpm and backflush at the same time, so each vessel can handle about 250gpm when working properly ...

[Grendel]

Do you really need a softener system, is your water truly hard coming out of the well, [i.e. has it been tested?] One of our houses we had on a well truly had no need for a water softener so we never installed one, one less thing to maintain/break.

[Tarsun2]

ha, same situation here. but in PA.
bought the house about 5 years ago. replaced the pressure tank, switch, well pump, wiring, added dual stage filters, and are now adding a water softener.
i think our hardness is between 140 and 250 ppm... well se how this works.

as far as a salt free system, there are saltless softeners. they use K chloride instead of Na chloride. (or something like that) but they still need a flush and recharge. What about the electro systems that "rearrange the molecules in the water" or something like that.

maybe another holding tank?