I Have A Water Softener! OMNIfilter OM34K-S-18

[chachp]

Thanks Eugene for the reply.

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">I was going to dig into this later today and see what options ours offers.  The app gives me some information like what I have attached.  Ours is in a little shed outside designed for it and we were planning to add salt today anyway so I thought I'd poke around on the panel.  I also have the book but its like Greek to me.  If I read some of this correctly it sounds like it will do a regen when it needs one based on usage.  According to the app it almost looks like its doing one about once a week.  Ha, I may be better off to leave well enough alone.  He told us, based on our water usage, that we should expect to add salt about every six months and that is pretty close to what it's been. </span>

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">BTW Eugene, how are you enjoying your soft water?  Are you noticing a difference yet when carrying out your daily activities?  Ours was more for my psoriasis than anything else.  I found when I was traveling to a hotel in PA where I stay for work (usually two weeks at a time) mine would clear up and when I came home it would flare again.  Turns out the hotel has soft water from what they told me.  After we put in the softener I found a huge difference in my skin.  Very few flare ups.  We've also seen the other obvious benefits.  I'd sure hold onto that landlord.  He sounds like a gem.</span>

 

[foraloysius]

500 - 675 gallons per week

Eugene,

That is 2 - 2.5 times as much as I use. What on earth are you doing with all that water? lol

 

[frigilux]

Ralph- How nice to have all that information about your softener available on an app! If you’ve had only 4 regenerations in 28 days you’re probably already optimized.

I’ve been spoiled with soft water since I was born in 1959. Had it wherever I lived, including college. On the occasions when either a softener malfunction or some other anomaly led to hard water, I can really feel the difference in the shower. Windom’s hard water feels almost astringent when showering. The dishwasher doesn’t clean as well either, especially pots & pans. Laundry requires substantially more detergent and even then stains aren’t removed as well.

My landlord and I get along well. He’s 38 years old and has a big family—seven kids between the ages of two and sixteen. This 8-plex is the smallest of his three properties. The others are in Worthington, MN, 28 miles southwest of here. I keep an eye on the building and always let him know if there’s a leak somewhere or some other problem.

Every other Monday he pulls the building’s five recycling bins out to the street and I move them back to the north side of the garage when they’ve been emptied so he doesn’t have to make a trip back later. I regularly run the vacuum over the carpet in the front entry, the steps leading up to the four apartments on this level and the landing because I like the front of the building to look spotless. He values having a long term, reliable tenant who takes good care of the place; he treats me well in kind.

 

[Marky_Mark]

Wow, Eugene, 25 GPG is crazy hard!  As for the calendar override, I was quite curious about this and I wanted to learn more, so I have just called your water softener manufacturer in Brookfield, WI at (800) 279-9404 and asked them about this.  They said that the calendar override will only trigger a regeneration if it has not regenerated for 7 days.  So I don't know why it regenerated on Sunday when it had only just regenerated on Friday.  I'd keep an eye on that and see what's going on.

 

Looking at the manual:

The HE setting uses 3.4 lb of salt and 46 gal of water and will provide 600 gal.

The HC setting uses 16.7 lb of salt and 57 gal of water and will provide 1,360 gal, as you mentioned.

So whichever of the two settings you use, it may well be the case that your softener will regenerate once per week based on the calendar override, so the HE setting will save lots of salt and a little water.

On the other hand, if your water usage is higher, then it may end up regenerating every 5 or 6 days on the HE setting.  But in this case the calendar override should NOT cause it to regenerate at all as it will never go longer than 7 days.

 

Ralph, when I was reading about softeners, I read a piece of advice that said you should never let your plumber program the softener LOL.  I bought our softener from a company in Canada and I had a local plumber install it.  He made a really nice job of the plumbing and the installation and I was very happy.  I asked him if he had programmed the hardness and he sheepishly said, "I don't know what that is." I told him not to worry and that I would do it.  But obviously if you have an actual water softening company to do the work, then they should know.

 

Also, Ralph, our water softener records our water usage in gallons and litres.  And our water bill records our usage in CCF (748 US gallons).  It appears that almost all our water usage is taking place outside the house for irrigation and only a fraction is going through the water softener for use within the home.  In fact, the water bill shows that we have been using just over 1,000 gallons (about 4,000 litres or 4 cubic metres or 4 tonnes) per day.  Apparently this is normal in the desert and our neighbours' water usage is not massively below ours, although ours does still seem unusually high.  It still sounds shocking to me.  I can see why many people opt for "desert landscape" in the desert.  Green lawns, flowers, trees and plants may look nice but they sure do need an obscene amount of water to create the oasis in the desert.  Fortunately water is extremely cheap in Palm Springs.  

 

Louis, inside the home, we tend to use about two-thirds of what Ralph uses in our homes in Sitges and Palm Springs.  It was the same when we lived in the UK, typically around 500 litres per day.

 

[Marky_Mark]

Ralph, what is your water hardness?

 

Eugene, you sounds like a landlord's dream tenant!  I can see why he has returned the favour

 

[chachp]

Our water bill separates them out.

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">Mark, </span>

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">We have a water meter for the house and a separate meter for the sprinkler system.  We pay less for the water used for the sprinklers vs. the water for the house because that water doesn't use the Sewer.  That's what they told us.  We used to live about 30 miles north of here and water was crazy cheap.  Even with watering in the hottest months we never hit above about $70 a month for water.  Not here.  Water is a lot more expensive.  In the summer we easily double that.  It's the price we pay to have green landscapes in the south.</span>

 

<span style="font-family: helvetica;">Our hardness is around 10 as I recall.</span>

 

[frigilux]

Mark- My landlord had set the hardness level at 30 gpg, which apparently caused the softener to regenerate after only 2 days. I backed it down to 25 gpg and it regenerated again at 2:00 this morning (3 days) which I think is still too often for the amount of water I use.

Looked at some user reviews online and several mentioned the unit recharges more frequently than necessary. I reduced the hardness level again, this time to 14 gpg, so we’ll see if that gets things under control. If the water gets hard before the next regeneration, I’ll move the setting up to 18 gpg and try that.

Thanks for your research and input! I appreciate the help.

 

[Marky_Mark]

Eugene, have you seen anything about the reserve capacity?  I didn't see anything mentioned.  If the reserve is set to a very high percentage then that could explain why it's regenerating sooner than expected.  Although if it's set to 30 GPG and HC, then it should provide 1,133 gallons before regen.  So with a 20% reserve, a regeneration would be triggered after using 906 gal.  So you'd still have to have used an enormous amount of water in two days for it to have triggered a regen.  I see that page 13 of the manual shows how to access all the stats on water usage etc.  I would keep an eye on those and see what's going on.

 

Ralph, that's interesting that you have two meters!  In seems that in Palm Springs they just assume that very little of what you use goes to the sewer.  So that explains why the cost is pretty low at $2.08 per CCF ($0.73 per cubic metre).  Although there are also standing charges and also a sewer tax included with the property tax (but not metered).  The cheap water makes up for the punishingly expensive electricity rates in Palm Springs.