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Author:
kabguidon (CT)
Hi,
I live in Connecticut. We have well-water and a septic system. Our water is very hard (202 mg/L), and we would like to soften it for our showers—everything else in the house works fine. But CT does not allow you to drain water softener brine to your septic system. And we don't have space on our property to install a dry well. Agh!
I was thinking about the following solution to this problem:
1) Install a small water softener in our unfinished basement, so it only softens the hot water line going to the shower. This way, we use as little salt as possible. Something like this model seems good: [www.waterboss.com]
2) Install a tankless electric water heater for this water line (our house doesn't have gas). I know that tankless electric heaters aren't supposed to be great in cold climates. But the reviews on this one suggests that it's powerful enough to run one shower. [www.amazon.com] The rest of our house's hot water would be served by our main electric water heater tank.
3) Drain the brine from the softener drain to two 50 gallon HDPE drums in our basement. [www.homedepot.com] My calculations suggest that if we take 3 showers a day, at 17 gallons per shower, and the softener required 15 gallons to regenerate, then we're looking at about 15 gallons of brine a month. I'd then need to hire someone to come by once every 3-6 months to pump the brine out of the drums. Maybe a septic pump truck would do this for us?
I realize this sounds like a crazy idea! But I'm really stuck: We want to soften our water, but we can't seem to figure out how! This is my best idea.
Thanks for any thoughts!
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Author:
jblanche (WI)
Have you spoken with a local water conditioning company?
Cylinder exchange service seems like it might be appropriate for your situation. This was very common years ago, with many households having a periodic visit to exchange a resin tank, and no brine tank. I haven't seen this for decades, probably because around here the economics say to buy your own softener.
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Links to the State of Wisconsin Plumbing Code:
[docs.legis.wisconsin.gov]
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I am not a plumber.
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