With more than 30 years’ experience in the residential and commercial water treatment space, Mark Nelson is a Class 1 Drinking-Water Operator and a CBWA (Canadian Bottled Water Association) Certified Plant Operator. As founder and president of Nelson Water in Ottawa, Mark focuses on dealing with challenging water treatment system designs for problem water. He also heads the largest water bottling plant in the city of Ottawa with a delivery network throughout the Valley.

A water softener is a sound investment because it improves your daily life and it protects your plumbing system and water using appliances from hard water damage. Many people choose a water softener at a big box store and install it themselves to “save money,” and this is a mistake. Why? Well, a water softener is a complex system, it must be the correct size to meet the soft water needs of your home, and it may require other features. In this article, we will take a closer look at water softeners and how you can choose the right one for your home.

A Brief Overview

Choosing the right water softener size is important and if you’ve never owned or used a system like this before it may seem to be a simple decision. After all, bigger is always better, right? Well, in this case, that’s not necessarily true, and if you have a water softener that’s too large, it can waste a lot of water during the regeneration cycle. This will drive up the utility bills for no gain, and it doesn’t make sense to spend money for no reason. There are three key factors that must be considered carefully before you make a final purchasing decision: the average daily water usage, the water hardness level, and grains of hardness that the water softener needs to remove each day. Let’s take a look at these three factors in more detail.

1.  Average Daily Water Usage

This is the initial stage because there is no point in paying for soft water that you cannot use or having too little to meet your needs. So, it’s important to calculate the average daily water usage for every person living in the home. This may sound difficult, but it’s easier if you can assess your water bills for the fall and winter months. Why? Well, at these times the indoor water use is pretty consistent, vehicles are washed less, and there are no swimming pools to fill.

The water consumption figure presented on the water bills is shown in cubic meters. Simply divide this figure by the number of billing days, and you have the daily water use volume. To make sure that you have the correct data, this calculation can be repeated with a few water bills, and you may want to find the average. So, if you check three water bills, add them together and divide them by three to get the average water usage.

It’s important to bear in mind that the water usage will rise in the warmer months when people tend to use more water for a wide variety of activities. The volume of water used will also rise or fall depending on the number of people living in the home. So, if a child goes to college or a relative moves in, the water requirements will change. If you have a major change of this nature, it’s a good idea to contact your local water treatment specialist. They can adjust the control valve on the water softener to optimize the settings to meet your new needs.

2.  The Water Hardness Level

Hard water contains an elevated concentration of dissolved minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, and to a certain extent, iron too. But, the hardness of the water can vary a great deal depending on a number of factors, including geography, groundwater deposits, the volume of rainfall, and more.

Hard water is measured in grains per gallon (gpg), and 1 gpg is equivalent to 17.1mg/L. When we talk about grains, we’re stating the number of grains of dissolved minerals found in a body of water. So, if the measurement is 22 gpg that means that there are 22 grains of dissolved calcium, magnesium, or iron in that single gallon of water. To convert this into mg/L simply multiply this figure by 17.1, which in this example would be: 22 x 17.1 = 376.2 mg/L. More information about the water hardness in your city and conversion calculators are readily available online.

3.  The Grains of Hardness that Must be Removed per Day

Once you know how much water your home uses on average each day and the hardness of your water supply, it’s pretty easy to work out how many grains of hardness that the system needs to remove. Multiply the daily water usage by the water hardness, and you have the daily softening requirement for a prospective water softener. To make this calculation even easier, simply use 75 gallons as the average water used for a single person in the home.

As an example: Let’s say that there are three people living in a home that would be: 3 (people) x 75 (gallons) = 225 gallons of water used per day.

For an easy calculation, let’s say that the water hardness is 10 gpg.

To continue: 225 (gallons) x 10 (gpg) = 2250 grains per day.

So, in this case, the water softener that is required would need to be capable of removing 2250 grains per day to provide sufficient soft water to meet the needs of everyone living in the home. It’s important to know these figures for your own home because water softeners are graded for their capacity, and this should be clearly displayed. Most modern water softeners tend to regenerate on a weekly basis to prepare the resin media bed for an efficient ion-exchange process.

In Conclusion

As you can see, choosing the right water softener to meet the needs of your home can be a tricky proposition. Some other factors to consider are frequent seasonal visitors, entertaining and other aspects of modern life that can increase the volume of water used. We tend to use more water during the spring and summer months, and you may want to factor this into your planning. Choosing an undersized water softener system is a bad idea because you will not get the soft water that you need. If the system is a little larger than you need, it can supply soft water when the demand is a little higher. But, if the water softener is too large, it can waste large volumes of water during the regeneration cycle.

If you want help choosing the ideal water softener to meet all your needs, contact your local water treatment specialist today.