Who has a water softener?

[canfossi]

Does anyone here have a water softener and drink the water? I know the sodium in the water isn't good for people with high blood pressure. A friend of mine said that there is a bypass thing that doesn't let the sodium into the drinking water i.e. kitchen faucet. Is there such a thing? My water hardness is 14, how is that on the water hardness scale? Thanks Chris

[Cabin Fever]

The "bypass" is plumbing that goes directly from your well to the kitchen faucet.

[georgec]

14 is fairly hard. If you don't want the sodium you can use another type of salt, I think it is potassium-chloride; but it is about twice the cost.

[jross]

We use potassium chloride in our softener. Lowes and Tractor Supply sell it for around $8.70 for 40 lbs which is twice the cost of sodium chloride. Agway sells it for $11.70 for a 40 lb bag. When our local Lowes stopped carrying it we had to go to sodium and our blood pressure rose to 140 over 90. We found potassium at Tractor Supply and now after two weeks on it today my bp was 130 over 80. Also potassium is less harmful to the environment than sodium. You got to dump that regeneration water somewhere.

[wombatcat]

We have a water softener, our water is extremely hard and is full of iron too. So we buy the rust-out pellets. I'm not sure how much salt is in there, but I can tell you I'd rather drink it than even catch a whiff of our water without the softener (the iron and sulfur in the water makes our natural water orange in color and it smells like a rusty can full of rotten eggs )

I have heard very little about the sodium level(s) in the softeners, although I have heard that people with certain medical conditions need to be cautious....

[Ohio dreamer]

When we were in Ohio we had 22 grains in our water. We bought a Ionics water conditioners system and really weren't thrilled with it. Next time around we are going to go to Lowes and get one. The neighbor bought one from Lowe's and for about 1/10 what we paid and had much better results. (and yes, our conditioner came with a service man that checked it every visit, so it was working properly...just unsatisfactorily)

[mdharris68]

Originally Posted by canfossi

Does anyone here have a water softener and drink the water? I know the sodium in the water isn't good for people with high blood pressure. A friend of mine said that there is a bypass thing that doesn't let the sodium into the drinking water i.e. kitchen faucet. Is there such a thing? My water hardness is 14, how is that on the water hardness scale? Thanks Chris

14 is probably considered mid to upper range. Our water hardness is 17 to 19 ppm. We bought an Ionics brand softner, and it was the best one I could find in 96'. The added benifit of the Ionics softner, is that it removes chlorine residue from the water as well as hardness, or at least that was what I was told when I bought it. It makes our water taste pure. The salt or potasium chloride is only used to backwash the hard minerals out of your resin beads and carbon. If your softened water gets enough sodium to raise bloodpressure, then the softner is not functioning correctly. Ours puts out some real finite number of sodium parts per million, so small I can't recall, because it wasn't enough to make a difference.

[Alice In TX/MO]

We have a water softener, too. Another advantage is that it keeps the grit out of your water heater and faucet screens.

I got a water softener for one of the rent houses, too, from Sears. They install, too.

[MelissaW]

I've been drinking it for 14 years and I'm not dead yet.

[baldylocks]

We had one in TN and it was great. Like MelissaW, we are not dead yet. I know there must be some salt in the water as everyone always says so (!) but most people are very sensitive to salt taste and I never tasted it in the water. Of course, that doens't mean much but you aren't drinking ocean water with a water softener. I really liked the way our glasses came out of the dishwasher sparkling rather than cloudy. Showers took some getting used to as I never felt rinsed at first, but I came to like it and the wife really liked it for her hair...

[WisJim]

Any by-pass to a faucet to provide non-softened water to drink is not a part of the softener, but part of the house plumbing.

There would not be salt in softened water, just potentially harmful levels of sodium. Some people will be sensitive enough to it to make it a health problem.

When we put in a water sofener (to extend the life of our water heating coil in the wood stove), I put in a bypass to supply hard water to the kitchen cold water faucet.

[jross]

It is not the salt you drink that is harmful, it is the salt you throw into certain environments that is a problem. Even potassium has some negative benefits to groundwater, but not as much as sodium. Ironically previously hard water scaled our hot water coil in the furnace. Now it seem the soft water is descaling it, but I am concerned just how much of the heat exchanger will be compromised. When I see the heater safety blowing and the pressure above the nornal5 -10 lbs, then we have a problem.