Anybody have a portable water softener for water spot removal?

[ohiohatteras]

Do any of you guys have a potable water spot remover? And if you do.....do you have any idea on what is inside the piece of PVC pipe? Just cant seem to drop $300 for a piece of PVC with rock salt inside!

I would like to make one.....but am wondering what else must be inside to justify the cost? And ideas or info is greatly appreciated!

Thx

 

[Pascal]

there are 2 or 3 brands that seem to be very popular... i tried one (Wet Spot I think...) and there were still a lot of water spots. it helped but not worth the $$$ in my opinion since if you want a really clean surface you still have to manually dry it.

 

[LIBERTY]

I plan to make one myself. I know from renewing a couple of household units that the active incredient is a "media" that looks, and feels, like tiny glass beads. This media has some molecular charge that attracts the iron and calcium with an ion charge. The minerals attach themselves to the catalytic media and thus you end up with soft water. When the media reaches its holding capacity you re-charge the media wih salt water. Apparently the minerals prefer to be attached to the NaCl and let go of the media beads and are back-flushed out. The trick is keeping the beads from coming out of the unit discharge. With a household unit this is done by putting fine rocks then sand in the bottom of the cylinder then having the discharge pipe, with fine filtering slits, drawing through the rocks. This filtering should be able to be accomplished with fine screening. When I get it built I will report back.

 

[GJH]

I have a small Spot Free that came with the boat. Depending where we are getting our water from it helps cleaning the boat a lot or as Pascal said, a little. That also may be due to my not recharging the thing frequently enough, as easy as that is to do, I just forget to do it.

It has a big water filter in line before the "softener" canister; we run all the water that comes into the boat (direct or in the tanks) through the system. The tank water tastes good and washes things nicely. The boat gets washed with water that has been run through the system.

The system is recharged by placing a filter sized canister of softener rock salt in the filter housing and running water through until the salt is gone... you disconnect the out put while doing this and run it over board. It certainly looks like it must be simple, though ours is heavy duty metal, not PVC, and it is a little unwieldy to move the whole get-up around.

Aqua-Tech makes a good water spot removal/prevention solution if you are trying to get them off a particularly pesky area. I still like to use a chamois mop for wiping down wherever possible.

 

[eze2bme]

Like George I have a water softener also ... made by Boji ... the large capacity model that will treat 5000 gallons before needing to be recharged with the salt pellets ... not sure what's inside but it works well ... and to recharge you just remove the filter cartridge from the pre-filter and put 2 pounds of salt pellets in the canister and flush it through letting the discharge water run free. Use mine just as George does ... treats the water coming into the boat as well as the wash down water. West Marine was my source @ $360.00.

 

[ohiohatteras]

Found this one for about $150.....due to time being very valuable right now....I'm gonna give it a try!

http://www.watersticks.com/index1.htm

 

[TopHattandTails]

Found this one for about $150.....due to time being very valuable right now....I'm gonna give it a try!

http://www.watersticks.com/index1.htm

Yachtzee- if your really hard pressed for time, shoot over to Walmart and p/u 2 RV water filters for $20 each and hook 'em up in series. Takes the Catawba stink out of your ice.