- This topic has 0 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 5 years, 9 months ago by
CLOC-Admin.
CLOC-Admin.- Topic
CLOC-AdminAfter putting it off for a while, I bought a water softener. The water in our current location is terrible. The shower smelled like a foundry, and even with 2 filters, the drinking water tasted bad. It’s much better with the softener.The unit came with testing strips. When I looked for additional strips, I found an electronic “total dissolved solids” tester for just a few dollars more than the strips. The reviews for it are very good. Sorry I’m not linking, I’m on my phone. Will this type of tester do the same thing as the strips? It seems to be both more accurate and, in the long run, more economical.
Anybody using one?
Cliff
Posted: 6:36 PM – Jun 19, 2014I’m interested in the device you mentioned. Let us know where it is. Love my water softener.Posted: 8:49 PM – Jun 19, 2014papacliff wrote:After putting it off for a while, I bought a water softener. The water in our current location is terrible. The shower smelled like a foundry, and even with 2 filters, the drinking water tasted bad. It’s much better with the softener.The unit came with testing strips. When I looked for additional strips, I found an electronic “total dissolved solids” tester for just a few dollars more than the strips. The reviews for it are very good. Sorry I’m not linking, I’m on my phone. Will this type of tester do the same thing as the strips? It seems to be both more accurate and, in the long run, more economical.
Anybody using one?
Cliff
X2 Let us know where you found it, I want one of those!
Sheff
Posted: 9:42 PM – Jun 19, 2014Don’t know anything about the electronic tester, but someone suggested that I should cut the test strips in half long ways and have twice as many. It works great and the small head is still big enough to check for color.Pilgrim
Posted: 11:07 PM – Jun 19, 2014Sorry folks, I’m on my phone due to lack of Internet at this CG. I’m not sure I can paste a link, but search for TDS-4 at Amazon and it comes up. It looks like a pen, and runs a little over $20. There are a few models, the plain model seems to be the best fit. There are others for aquariums and such.Cliff
Posted: 5:59 AM – Jun 20, 2014In short, a TDS tester will not tell you when you need to regenerate your softener. If you stay in one place only, and do a fresh regeneration, use a TDS tester on your freshly softener water, it might be able to give you an idea of the magnitude of change, but I doubt that will be of any use.From Wikepedia:
“Total dissolved solids (TDS) is a measure of the combined content of all inorganic and organic substances contained in a liquid in molecular, ionized or micro-granular (colloidal sol) suspended form. Generally the operational definition is that the solids must be small enough to survive filtration through a filter with two-micrometer (nominal size, or smaller) pores. Total dissolved solids are normally discussed only for freshwater systems, as salinity includes some of the ions constituting the definition of TDS. The principal application of TDS is in the study of water quality for streams, rivers and lakes, although TDS is not generally considered a primary pollutant (e.g. it is not deemed to be associated with health effects) it is used as an indication of aesthetic characteristics of drinking water and as an aggregate indicator of the presence of a broad array of chemical contaminants.Primary sources for TDS in receiving waters are agricultural and residential runoff, leaching of soil contamination and point source water pollution discharge from industrial or sewage treatment plants. The most common chemical constituents are calcium, phosphates, nitrates, sodium, potassium and chloride, which are found in nutrient runoff, general stormwater runoff and runoff from snowy climates where road de-icing salts are applied. The chemicals may be cations, anions, molecules or agglomerations on the order of one thousand or fewer molecules, so long as a soluble micro-granule is formed. More exotic and harmful elements of TDS are pesticides arising from surface runoff. Certain naturally occurring total dissolved solids arise from the weathering and dissolution of rocks and soils. The United States has established a secondary water quality standard of 500 mg/l to provide for palatability of drinking water.
Total dissolved solids are differentiated from total suspended solids (TSS), in that the latter cannot pass through a sieve of two micrometers and yet are indefinitely suspended in solution. The term “settleable solids” refers to material of any size that will not remain suspended or dissolved in a holding tank not subject to motion, and excludes both TDS and TSS.[1] Settleable solids may include larger particulate matter or insoluble molecules.”
Posted: 10:53 AM – Jun 20, 2014John,It seems to me that the TDS tester can replace the strips. The strips read water hardness from 0-425PPM. The tester has a greater range, my concern is whether I would get a false positive, as I don’t know exactly what the strips read, as opposed to the total dissolved solids that the tester reads. The TDS could be much higher than what the strip is telling me. One way to work around it is to use the tester and compare it to a strip right after regeneration, and use that as my baseline. Then I could retest later, and when the TDS has gone up by a certain amount, regenerate. I remember that the instructions say to regenerate above 3GPG. I don’t have the strip container in front of me, so I can’t convert GPG to PPM.
I’m going to selectively snip from your post and highlight here:
“although TDS is not generally considered a primary pollutant (e.g. it is not deemed to be associated with health effects) it is used as an indication of aesthetic characteristics of drinking water and as an aggregate indicator of the presence of a broad array of chemical contaminants.”The reason I’m using a water softener is to improve the aesthetic characteristics of my drinking water (among other things). I don’t know what the hardness strips read, if they also see TDS, then there is no difference between them and the tester other than precision, and how to read it. If the strips are reading a more specific contaminant, then they would be more accurate/useful.
Cliff
Posted: 12:53 PM – Jun 20, 2014Cliff,Your proposed process will work fine if you never change locations, and you also get a baseline of when total hardness exceeds 3 grains per gallon or 50 pays per million. The I have older test strips that see total hardness as VaCO3. There is a lot more stuff in total dissolved solids.
All test strips have an expiration date. When I had a hot tub I fid cut the strips as recommended because there was frequent monitoring well within the use by date. With rv softener I get quick heads up as soap takes a bit more to lather and counter intuitively feels like it is easier to rinse off. I pull out the test strips when it looks like a convenient time to regenerate. I generally get tired of the water and do this well before I hit the 7 grains / 120 ppm.
Posted: 5:43 PM – Jul 10, 2014Here’s an update. I bought the tester and received it today. I ran a test and didn’t get the results I expected. I went to the mfg. website (which I should have done before buying) and found out that it will NOT work to test water softeners. Fortunately, I got it from Amazon, so the return will be mostly painless.Ah, well.
Cliff
Posted: 7:07 PM – Jul 10, 2014papacliff wrote:Here’s an update. I bought the tester and received it today. I ran a test and didn’t get the results I expected. I went to the mfg. website (which I should have done before buying) and found out that it will NOT work to test water softeners. Fortunately, I got it from Amazon, so the return will be mostly painless.Ah, well.
Cliff
HI Cliff – we got a plastic bottle with test strips as part of our purchase of a water softener last year. I bought from the RV Water Filter store, who has a storefront location in Yuma, AZ. We made great use of our softener over 7 months, and in one case, the hardness out of the park faucet was 250 grains, but 0 grains out of the softener. I will probably buy some more test strips this winter and not bother with a digital gauge.
Rick
B.W.Gentry
Owner/Admin
2007 Carri-Lite XTRM5
Breckenridge, TX
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.