Electronic hard water treatment systems

[Jean]

Just got a letter from Scalerid by EdenPure saying that they have a device to put on the water pipes that will remove hard water scale. Has anyone tried this? They say you can put them on both metal and plastic pipe and will adjust to any size pipe. We have lots of lime in our water and would like to remove it but have not and will not go to the actual "water softeners". Don't need the extra expense of salt and water waste. Any information would be helpful and hoping that someone would have actual experience with the EdenPure, Scalerid treatment system. Thanking you in advance for your time and experience.
Jean

[Cabin Fever]

Well, EdenPure heaters are a scam, and a device to remove hardness - which physically removes nothing from the water - appears to also be a scam.

[Darren]

The key is where is the lime going to go that's removed from the water? It can't simply vanish. It either stays in the water or sticks to the pipes unless you have a way of physically removing it from your water system.

[MichaelK!]

Darn! I wanted to be the first to state it's a scam!

Didn't take Chemistry 101 back in school, did you? As Darren says, the lime simply CAN'T disappear. Electricity or magnets around the outside of the pipe do NOTHING to the water!

[Harry Chickpea]

Most likely it is a magnet. I'd advise against it. There is one or two places where I know that such things can work, the first is in the supply of a chilling tower, where the water circulates a lot. I've actually seen the results in one at a big theatre, and a long-time industrial HVAC tech I knew found them very useful. The other place he said they worked was in boiler feed water. I've not personally seen anything to prove or disprove that.

After seeing what a magnet could do, I decided to put a small magnet on the output of a reverse osmosis water filter I had, where the water would pass through the magnetic field on the way to the storage container. For whatever reason, that water made me sick. When I removed the magnet and flushed out the water, the water was fine again. Weird stuff.

I don't remember exactly what the HVAC tech said, but I think it was along the lines that it potentiated or polarized the molecules, which kept something from depositing out calcium. It was a number of years ago, and I'm not sure where he got his information anyway.

Oh yeah, forgot to add - I've been researching flocculation methods recently, and apparently there are methods of using positive and negative electrical potential in water to affect how it behaves. - pH and such. Any conductor passing through magnetic lines of force will generate electricity. The potential generated by a single magnet would be very very small, but would exist. In my case, I'm looking to do the exact opposite of what a magnet would - I want dirt and any metal ions to precipitate out of water as part of my filtration. When I get a little magnesium chloride (epsom salts in chlorinated water) in my bubbling bath, I get a foam that contains coagulated dirt, less than five microns in size.

[Txrider]

Originally Posted by MichaelK!

Darn! I wanted to be the first to state it's a scam!

Didn't take Chemistry 101 back in school, did you? As Darren says, the lime simply CAN'T disappear. Electricity or magnets around the outside of the pipe do NOTHING to the water!

The only thing I can think of that they could possibly do is set up the pipe to repel things sticking to it, but I would think that would be akin to making the pipe a sacrificial anode if the pipe was metal.

So the water would be just as hard, it might just stick to the pipes less..

You can also make chemical changes in water with an electrical charge... That's how salt water pools work. Electrical current applied to plates that water runs between breaks down salt into different components such as chlorine. A lead acid battery does similar and releases hydrogen.

I still say it's basically a scam though.

[Alice In TX/MO]

SCAM! (I was hoping to be first, too.)