The newer softeners like Apex use ground coconut shells and Charcoal, no salt. People with bad hearts should not use salt based softeners.
Yes we agree in this case I should have said. But there is Sodium also which after filtering and before regeneration that is added to the water through the softening process. Yes it suspends the resin beads as it takes out Calcium and Magnesium until it is slowly used up and has to be added to it is expelled through the process in the water system. And less sodium for anyone is a good thing IMO.
Never liked softened water. Always felt like you didn't get all the soap off in the shower. One could plumb it to just the hot water taps to avoid consumption. I can see it's necessity in a boiler system.
There are a myriad of ways to do this but this was my cheap janky redneck way. Enjoy. Summer boredom is setting in. I have a 40 foot tour bus, Ford Expedition extended length, a 23 foot Rockwood Roo camper and my golf cart. That’s a lot of real estate to wash. I was tired of paying $80 for my bus to be washed at blue beacon, and the truck washes were getting expensive too. I don’t mind washing my toys every now and then by hand at home but the spot free rinse aspect was something I couldn’t get around and I couldn’t ever dry them before they self dried and the spots settled in. Solution:I went to Walmart and bought a 5 gallon water cooler jug. Filled it with the reverse osmosis water that Wal-Mart sells at their water machine and brought it home and strapped it to my cart. I took a 12 volt pump I had lying around and plumbed a vinyl hose on the intake end, popped that down into the jug and plumbed a garden hose to the outlet end of the pump. I took a hose sprayer I had in my toolbox and drilled a teeny weeny hole in the end so that when I pulled the trigger it would just mist out of the hole. I wired the pump directly to the golf cart battery (temporary setup) and now when I wash my toys, I do one section at a time and rinse it with my spot free RO water. The cost to fill the jug at Walmart is $1.95. So for less than $2 I can wash my toys and rinse them spot free now. 5 gallons rinsed by bus and my trailer.Improvements:I need to get a proper misting head from a garden sprayer because my drilled hole mod leaks a lot of water down my arm and wastes it. A lot. I’ve used a garden sprayer to rinse my Bus in the past and I could do the entire bus with 2 gallons of water so I’m wasting a lot with this setup. I’ll fix this shortly.I would like to wire up the pump with a fuse and a switch on the back somewhere to turn it on and off. Pump has a pressure switch that kills it when pressure is reached but when I’m not using the system I just want to turn off power to it. I made a ghetto metal strap/bolt setup to hold the throttle pedal to keep the cart idling so I didn’t kill the battery. I ran this setup for well over an hour and it worked perfectly. But I’d like to actually build some sort of pull cable for idling that goes directly to the carb so that I can still set the parking brake if I’m ever not on level ground.I have a harbor freight retractable 50’ water/air hose that I think I’ll install for easier hose handling. I know this is a janky setup, but I thought I’d just throw it out there. Summer boredom project I suppose. Worked good though. Short video at the bottom of this post.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitD-SaNNP8