I live in CA and am considering buying a water softener for our RV. Trying to keep the hard water spots off of everything inside and hope that it will keep mineral deposits from forming in the plumbing. Does anybody have any experience with them? The units that I've seen seem kinda' bulky.
If they are like ones in homes then they would take up a lot of space. Do you have that much trouble with hard water? We have only found this in couple places in west side of Wyoming. Some parks in Wyoming have salt and all types of minerals in water. Minerals runs from 0 to 3.5 on the hardness scale. We check water or ask about this problem in bad places and if water is not to good we run off our tank and move on next day.
We have an "on the go" water softener and wouldn't be without it. It's small, uses one container of table salt ($.33 at Wal-Mart), and lasts for about 300 gallons, although if the water quality is good, much longer. Besides the taste/soap issue, it prolongs plumbing and appliance life. I recently flushed the water heater after one year's use; before the softener I would see a lot of scale and discoloration, this time no scale and very little discoloration. At less than $300, it's a good investment. By the way, a couple of months ago in Southern Cal (San Onofre), the water tested bright orange on the test strip (very, very hard); after plugging in the softener it returned to green (soft). Southern Cal has terrible water!
QUOTE(John Blue @ Jun 28 2007, 09:09 PM) [snapback]7496[/snapback] If they are like ones in homes then they would take up a lot of space. Do you have that much trouble with hard water? We have only found this in couple places in west side of Wyoming. Some parks in Wyoming have salt and all types of minerals in water. Minerals runs from 0 to 3.5 on the hardness scale. We check water or ask about this problem in bad places and if water is not to good we run off our tank and move on next day. "Trouble" may not be the right word. I just know what it does to our home fixtures after time. That's copper piping and not the pvc that's in the MH. But yeah. The water here in So. Cal. is very hard.
After having used mine a few times over the past few months, I have mixed emotions. It does what it advertises to do. But,I only use it if I'm going to be in one spot for a few days. It's kinda' bulky to hook it up for an overnight stay. The down side is that it does take away a decent amount of water pressure (as I would guess anything else that you hooked up in line). I used the shower on the last day of our trip without the softener hooked up and there was a noticeble difference in the water pressure. Hadn't thought about the washing aspect. Thanks for that bit of advice. You said you only needed to recharge yours once or twice a year. How often do you use yours? We're a family of 4 and run the showers frequently.
QUOTE(gwbischoff @ Sep 11 2007, 03:41 PM) [snapback]8305[/snapback] After having used mine a few times over the past few months, I have mixed emotions. It does what it advertises to do. But,I only use it if I'm going to be in one spot for a few days. It's kinda' bulky to hook it up for an overnight stay. The down side is that it does take away a decent amount of water pressure (as I would guess anything else that you hooked up in line). I used the shower on the last day of our trip without the softener hooked up and there was a noticeble difference in the water pressure. Hadn't thought about the washing aspect. Thanks for that bit of advice. You said you only needed to recharge yours once or twice a year. How often do you use yours? We're a family of 4 and run the showers frequently. We hook our up even for overnights. There is just my wife and I and we are weekend campers, one or two showers a day when camping. . We probably camp 30-50 nights a year plus a couple of trailer and truck washings. I recharged it in March and again last weekend.
QUOTE(Ed. C. @ Sep 23 2007, 12:22 AM) [snapback]8414[/snapback] QUOTE(gwbischoff @ Sep 11 2007, 03:41 PM) [snapback]8305[/snapback] After having used mine a few times over the past few months, I have mixed emotions. It does what it advertises to do. But,I only use it if I'm going to be in one spot for a few days. It's kinda' bulky to hook it up for an overnight stay. The down side is that it does take away a decent amount of water pressure (as I would guess anything else that you hooked up in line). I used the shower on the last day of our trip without the softener hooked up and there was a noticeble difference in the water pressure. Hadn't thought about the washing aspect. Thanks for that bit of advice. You said you only needed to recharge yours once or twice a year. How often do you use yours? We're a family of 4 and run the showers frequently. We hook our up even for overnights. There is just my wife and I and we are weekend campers, one or two showers a day when camping. . We probably camp 30-50 nights a year plus a couple of trailer and truck washings. I recharged it in March and again last weekend. I've just used ours on two two-week trips with a month off in betweeen and I'm wondering when I might need to recharge it. Now there's twice as many of us than there are of you. What about during storage? I would think that any water that would be in the unit (even if yo drain it well) would dissolve some of the salt inside, no?
Water softeners do not use salt to soften the water. The water is softened by the resin inside of the softener. The salt is only use to regenerate the softener. To store the softener, regenerate the unit and drain as much water as possible, then before you use it again you should regenerate it again. If you are in a high iron area use about 1 table spoon of rust out if you have a small (.25 cuft) or 2 table spoons with at larger unit (.4 cuft) when you are regenerating and it will make you resin last much longer and give you a larger capcity with your regeneration.
I have written reviews on Water Softener, going through the reviews would help a lot in understanding features, pricing and other related information.
