Water treatment

[Trojan]

At my new dock I have well water. It's hard water and leaves water spots on everything. Have any of you used or installed a water softener on your boat. I see West Marine has a Marine and RV softener for around $3 bills. Are there any thoughts on the subject? Before I buy one.



BILL

 

[Angela]

I have seen these water softeners on the docks here. They are www.softwetspot.com (sounds like something that would get zapped here, but it's legit). In fact, I have one that came with my boat, but the recharge unit was never found. I understand from reading the literature that one charge, which takes about 15 minutes to do (using rock salt like a traditional water softener) will treat 300 gallons of water. For me, it would treat a fill of both of my water tanks each time.

Obviously, I haven't used mine since I haven't made it a priority to replace the recharge unit and frankly, my water isn't all that bad. Has anyone else here used these who can tell whether they are worth having? They are VERY popular here, so it seems they provide some benefit or so many people wouldn't have them.

 

[Passages]

My neighbor has one and to be honest, I don't see much improvement. We are on city water however, perhaps hard well water is different.

 

[luckydave215]

They're very popular in southern california, where our water supply comes from the Colorado River, and is about half minerals by weight.

 

[Freestyle]

Softwetspot works great. It leaves no residue on the glass when cleaning and tastes reasonably good.

Re-charging is a PITA so I now rarely do it. The guy who cleans boats in my marina uses my hose for about 4 other boats. So I would have to re-charge once or more a week which I just don't do.

The boat cleaner is a great guy working hard to feed his family. If using my hose and rendering my water filter useless helps him along then I can live with hard water spots.

Bruce
1976 43 DCMY
Freestyle
Tampa

 

[Paul45c]

Yeah, those water softeners on wheels you see at the boat stores cost about $700...a little rich, I think. The benefit is supposed to be that you don't need to mop down after washing down; I've heard mixed reviews, but very few people I know use them, so I'm taking it all with a grain of salt.

In thinking about trying to approximate that with a poor man's rig, I've often wondered if just a regular old whole-house filter canister like you'd get at Homeless Depot would do well enough for the purpose. When you read the literature on those things, they supposedly pull out a lot of the mineral content, depending on how dense a filter media you opt for. I had one in another house, and I can tell you it DID trap a lot of bad-looking stuff after only about a week's use. You know it's time to change when the water flow starts to choke down. It's gotta help, and the good news is that kind of rig only costs about $50 and the filters are a snap to replace when the time comes.

 

[Trojan]

Interesting, I know my neighbor uses a cartridge type filter about 12 inches long and 2 inches in diameter. It just connects inline with the hose. He says it helps. It last about a month and cost about $15. BUCKS. I would like something better that I could mount right in the boat. Maybe there is a small home unit that I could use instead of the high priced MARINE unit. Thanks for the info. I will check that sight.


BILL