Thanks for the article, and thanks for the conversions.
Grains per gallon has absolutely no meaning to me than
acre-feet per hour has to most people. Considering that a
can of Cambells soup may have nearly 900 mg of salt, the
numbers you show for salt addition of softened water are
indeed miniscule.

RB wrote:

I'll throw my two cents in here. These terms "hard" and "soft" are
quite subjective. The real issue is modifying water so that it is
useable. I'm attaching a short discussion I put together almost 10
years ago when I was in a debate with my parents' physician about the
damage they were doing to themselves by using a water softener. "Adding
so much sodium to their daily intake" was his claim. I was surprised he
didn't remember much chemistry.

RB

David Thomas wrote:
"Gary Slusser" wrote in message ...


Are you saying I don't know the terms of my industry? The ordinary person of
today pays little attention to correct terminologies and make up their own
as they go. Who was it that said pure when we were speaking about
oversoftening?


Hey Gary,

Been watching this one for a while and just couldn't keep my hands off
the keyboard any longer. ;-) I'll throw my 2 cents into the air and
then revert to lurking again.

Oversoftening in my mind is bring the calcium content of a water to
zero, i.e. exactly what an ion-exchange softener does. From my POV as
a public utility water provider, this is similar to jumping out of the
skillet of extreme hard water and into the fire of 'oversoftened'
water. Both extremes create their own problems. If a customer *wants*
soft*er* water (IMHO very few actually *need* soft water) they can
install a diverter around the softener to meter some unsoftened water
back into treated stream thus lowering the hardness to a manageable
level without 'oversoftening'. Most systems even have the diverting
plumbing already in place, lacking only the metering valve.

Really Gary, sometimes ya gotta think outside the box... or resin tank
as the case may be. ;-)

(I'm not even going to touch where the salt goes... this time anyway.
My folks still have rotting stumps where the beautiful blue spruce and
shag-bark hickory use to grow.)

David Thomas
Senior Analyst

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