[Shop-talk] water softeners redux

[David Scheidt]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 2:15 PM, Randall <tr3driver at ca.rr.com> wrote:

>
> I'm dubious about the whole "low sodium" thing, unless you have a particular
> medical condition where your body has a hard time regulating sodium.  Sodium
> is essential for human life, you will literally die (unpleasantly) without
> enough sodium intake.
>

Very few americans are in any danger of having too little sodium.
nearly all of them could use less.

> But if it's a concern for you, it is possible to run ion-exchange softeners
> on potassium instead of sodium.
>
>>   I'm willing to plumb a line to the kitchen sinks that by-passes
>> the softener so we're not drinking or cooking with that water, but the
>> ice-maker I'd just like to have filtered, non-sodium-saturated water.
>> just plain h2o, if at all possible.
>
> Unless you use a LOT of ice, there won't be enough sodium in it to matter.
> Each grain of hardness only takes about 8mg of sodium, so if you start with
> 15 grains per gallon (which is VERY hard water), you'll only wind up with
> about 15 mg of sodium per pound of ice (assuming all the sodium winds up in
> the ice; some ice makers make better ice than others by flushing
> contaminants down the drain).  Since 1000 mg/day is considered a "low
> sodium" diet, 15 mg/pound just doesn't seem like enough to worry about.
>

You've got a unit confusion problem.  Each grain of hardness per
gallon requires 8mg of sodium per litre of water softened.  (Yes, I
know that's insane way of measuring things.  but that's what they do.)
 And 15 grains is nothing.  Typical around my area (Northern Indiana)
is 30 to 50.
15 grains per gallon means you'll end up with 50 mg/lb or so.



-- 
David Scheidt
dmscheidt at gmail.com