Water softener hose spigot for washing cars ?

[Grease is the word]

I have a water softener installed and my two outside hose outlets are plumbed with hard water. It would take me about an hour and $20 to plumb an additional hose outlet in the garage to wash cars.

Has anyone done this? Results? Is it worth it?

Our hard water is about 22 to 25.

 

[Bret Chase]

I wouldn't do it... you'd be washing your car with salted water. My mother in law watered her house plants with softened water once... killed them all, now she uses a spigot on the well side of the softener.

-Bret

 

[labman]

I did the reverse, figuring calcium carbonate was better for my garden than salt and wanting to avoid depleting my soft water. If you are drying the car off afterwards, I doubt it would make much difference unless the hard water is causing soap scum. There isn't that much salt in the softened water. Even the underside of your car where you don't dry, won't make that much difference. Calcium carbonate is ionic too, and will cause corrosion.

 

[GatorJ]

Go ahead and do it, you'll get much less spotting. Most of the detailing sites recommend soft water use. I've been doing so for years.

 

[mountainhouse]

It's been great using softened water for washing the car. Our well water is fairly hard and will definitely leave spots. The soft water will spot slightly, but it's reduced considerably. I suspect you wax finish would hold up better too.

As far as the salt, we use the softened water in the backyard and have noticed no ill effects. I guess we need a VOA on softened water. I think the salt thing is blown out proportion by urban myth. I drink the softened water, and can't tell. Here's a site that says, "When very hard water (greater than 10 grains of hardness per gallon) is softened, only 20 to 40 mg of sodium is added to every 8 ounces of water."

 

[Grease is the word]

I think I will go ahead and try it.

 

[Not the Autorx Frank]

Just for general info,

Water softeners do not "salt the water". The salt is used as brine to clean the resin beads periodically that strip the hardness and reduce total dissolved solids in the water, thus making "soft water".

Just my 2 cents...

Frank

 

[tom slick]

quote:

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you'd be washing your car with salted water

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there isn't much salt in the water. after the softener runs the salted water through itself, it flushes all if it into the drain, then cycles clean water though and into the drain a few times, then the clear water runs through it again ready for use. considering there are hundreds of gallons that run through the softener between each regeneration cycle there is a minimal amount of salt.

 

[Gary Allan]

Okay ..the amount of salt in the water is directly related to the hardness. The resin bed attracts calcium and magnesium. It has a very strong attraction to them. When your bed is saturated ..you shock it with a brine solution that forces these particles off the resin. It's like one strong guy and 45 weaker guys competing for one chair. The weaker (salt) overwhelms the calc/mag. After your rinse ...you are left with a perfectly coated resin bead totally covered in salt. The amount of salt reintroduced into the water stream is depenant on the amount of calcium and magnesium is in the feed water ..it pushes the salt off the resin.

We found this out when we just blindly used our soft water to feed our cooling towers. We were getting calcium formations and losing cooling in our condesor. We just hooked up the soft water and thought "heck, we don't have to blow this stuff down any more". About a month later our tower sumps foamed over with a brine solution due to accumulated sodium.

That is, the harder the service water ..the more sodium will be in the softened water.

 

[HOndaGuy]

#1 Use meguiar's nxt car wash. It has a water softner in the soap already to help prevent water spots. #2 Rig up an inline water filter for your hose from home depot or lowes to help reduce spotting, and also reduce cholorine from the water to help keep up your waxed finish.

 

[Not the Autorx Frank]

Gary,

my water softener has a rinse cycle after the brine to remove the salt. you may want to look into that....


Frank

 

[T-Keith]

How about filtering the water with a good charcoal unit and using that? We had terribly mineral content in our city water. It spotted the cars horribly, we picked up a whole house filter for ~$30 and it solved our problems.

My mom killed her gold fish with soft water.

 

[labman]

quote:

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Originally posted by Not the Autorx Frank:
Gary,

my water softener has a rinse cycle after the brine to remove the salt. you may want to look into that....


Frank

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The rinse only removes the excess brine. It is all a numbers game. Water containing a small amount of calcium and magnesium is run through a resin bed with large numbers of sodium ions. What comes out are sodium ions, calcium ions, and magnesium ions in proportion to what is in the resin bed. As they build up in the bed, there are more of the calcium and magnesium ions coming out. Then it is time to flood the bed with brine and restore the bed to practically all sodium ions again. After the rinse cycle, the water has as many ions as it had before, just sodium in place of others.

No charcoal filter will remove ions. It may remove suspended particles that contribute to water spotting.

Ions can be removed from water by distillation, ion exchange (Not common water softeners), or reverse osmosis.

 

[bheinz57]

quote:

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Just for general info,

Water softeners do not "salt the water". The salt is used as brine to clean the resin beads periodically that strip the hardness and reduce total dissolved solids in the water, thus making "soft water".

Just my 2 cents...

Frank

True, to an extent. Soft water will usually have more TDS than the water it just conditioned. However, the exchange betweeen ions and all that crap in the water still makes the 'soft water' better all around. The salt is just used to replenish the sodium zeolite (most common softener resin) in the softener where the ion exchange happens that pulls the hardness out of the water. So there really isn't a high concentration of salt in the soft water. Brian

 

[T-Keith]

That's what I'm suggesting. Maybe the problem is from water contaminants not hard water.

-T

 

[Not the Autorx Frank]

Thats what I'm trying to say, You could water your grass or drink the stuff and it won't do any harm. Mabey slight salt level in it but I bet less than a tear drop has...

 

[Not the Autorx Frank]

Also, the tds is higher, i meant to say the calcium hardness is lower, thanks

 

[Gary Allan]

quote:

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Thats what I'm trying to say, You could water your grass or drink the stuff and it won't do any harm. Mabey slight salt level in it but I bet less than a tear drop has...

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This is true Frank. My ONLY point was that the amount of salt in the softened water is DIRECTLY related to the amount of hardness removed. If you have VERY HARD water (let's say you have a hardness of 10 and John Q. Poorba$tard has a hardness of 180= which was the hardness of our service water) you will have "more" sodium per gallon of "ZERO" hardness water. In the case of the example. John Q. will have 90x the amount of sodium in his soften water (assuming he regens before his bed is saturated) since he has 90x ppm of harness than you do at 10 ppm.

A commercial or industrial softener regenerates @ 0 hardness. They don't wait until the bed is saturated and yielding hard water. You go into service with ZERO hardness (brief residual hardness flushes out within a few minutes) .and go into regeneration @ ZERO harness. The sodium content is just what is "knocked off" the resin beads. The more hardness ..the more gets knocked off per gallon.

See what I'm trying to say?

 

[tmorris1]

quote:

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The sodium content is just what is "knocked off" the resin beads. The more hardness ..the more gets knocked off per gallon.

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I think most of this get washed away in the rinse cycle. Whatever sodium doesn't get rinsed away is what will end up in your soft water.

 

[dropitby]

I saw a thing on TV that has a filter that removes the clorine and stuff from the water and will give you your money back if when it dries it leaves spots, no more wiping it off.