In article
,
Sheldon wrote:

On Mar 1, 9:41?pm, Charles wrote:
On Sat, 1 Mar 2008 18:12:11 -0800 (PST), Sheldon
wrote:





Charles wrote:
"SteveB" wrote:

I believe that the hose bibs on the outside of my house are hooked to
the
soft water system. ?Is there any disadvantage to watering with soft
water?
They're about to turn on the irrigation water system in our rural area,
but
I need to get around and water some of the trees before that.

For occasional watering it is fine. ?For steady use I'd avoid it.
Most softening systems replace the calcium and magnesium with sodium.
Plants need calcium and magnesium, sodium is toxic. ?Over time it will
build up, change the soil properties.

That's not true. ?There is no more salt contained in softened water
than there is in the bottled water that people drink, usually less.
If softened water contained salt then it wouldn't be softened water,
now would it. ?The salt used by water softeners leaves the sytem as
grey water (along with the other minerals the system removes), that
never enters the domestic water. ?If the typical water softener uses a
pound of salt a day it's a lot, usually will use closer to 1/2 pound/
day. ?The trick is to find a way for disposing of the grey water
without it building up in one spot. ?My grey water (water from my
water softener, dehumidifier, and RO filter) is piped by gravity to a
creek, the same creek that collects run off from many thousands of
acres of lands as the creek meanders over many miles, which includes
the many tons of salt spread on the roads in winter by the highway
department.. my couple handfulls of salt a day is so negligible that
it doesn't count. ?And salt is not toxic it's a necessity of life, a
salt lick for live stock places more salt into the ground than any
water softener. ?Softened water contains very little salt, certainly
far less than if the water were not softened.

Wrong, unless you are using a dual ion exchange system. ?The common
household water softener just exchanges calcium and magnesium ions for
sodium. ?The carbonate, sulfate, or whatever else is in the water
stays where it is.

http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-a...aundry/questio...

Your reading comprehension skills are near the 3rd grade elementary
school level, and I'm being quite generous.

[per your web site]
"Regeneration involves soaking the beads or zeolite in a stream of
sodium ions. Salt is sodium chloride, so the water softener mixes up a
very strong brine solution and flushes it through the zeolite or beads
(this is why you load up a water softener with salt). The strong brine
displaces all of the calcium and magnesium that has built up in the
zeolite or beads and replaces it again with sodium. _The remaining
brine plus all of the calcium and magnesium is flushed out through a
drain pipe. "_

DOH!

Shelly, my dance instructor once told me that if I was going to fall, I
should do it gracefully. You might learn from that and not be so snotty
when you are so horribly wrong. The preceding paragraph reads,"The idea
behind a water softener is simple. The calcium and magnesium ions in the
water are replaced with sodium ions. Since sodium does not precipitate
out in pipes or react badly with soap, both of the problems of hard
water are eliminated. To do the ion replacement, the water in the house
runs through a bed of small plastic beads or through a chemical matrix
called zeolite. The beads or zeolite are covered with sodium ions. As
the water flows past the sodium ions, they swap places with the calcium
and magnesium ions. Eventually, the beads or zeolite contain nothing but
calcium and magnesium and no sodium, and at this point they stop
softening the water. It is then time to regenerate the beads or zeolite."

Hellooooo? Did you get that Shelly? The calcium and magnesium ions in
the water are **REPLACED** with sodium ions. Duh. Now go have a nice big
glass of soft water:-)
--

Billy

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