2014 Garden Hose Day “disappointing”

The 2014 National Garden Hose Day,  celebrated August 3,  was, according to national event chairman Bob Lewis, “disappointing.”  Lewis said that this year’s response to the event fell far below expectations.  Most would simply say that the event was a big flop.

The National Garden Hose Day has experienced consistent, enthusiastic annual growth since its inception, but the 2014 Garden Hose events were poorly attended in most cities around the US.

In addition, sales of products related to the celebration fell off sharply from last year. One marketing expert said. “I think we overestimated the commercial potential of the event. For one thing,  garden hose sales are flat nationwide.  There are simply too many garden hoses out there, and they last a long time.  When a family has three good garden hoses, it’s hard to sell them another one.  Let’s face it: garden hose innovation is difficult. You can’t sell a hose because  it has a fancier operating system. Drought in some areas has also driven sales down.  If you can’t water your lawn, you don’t need a spiffy new garden hose.”

The slump in event attendance has also been blamed in part on on drought and water shortage in many parts of the country.  People do not get excited about recreational events that center on water when water is being rationed. Consequently, one of last year’s most popular events, the Garden Hose Blast (see picture below, from last year’s contest in Des Moines, IA), was cancelled to save water. “Not having the Hose Blast,” Lewis said, “definitely hurt ticket sales.  The Hose Blast was really a crowd pleaser.”

Enthusiasm for National Garden Hose Day may also have been dampened by unexpected attacks on the celebration by several conservative talk show hosts whose motives were unclear.  It has been suggested that the totally secular nature of Garden Hose Day as well as its lack of patriotic significance have made it unpopular in certain circles. Event Chairman Lewis said, “Garden Hose Day is mainly just about about having a good time. Some  Americans seem uncomfortable about having a good time unless they can find justification.  If Moses had owned a garden hose, or if Ben Franklin had flown his kite with one, Garden Hose Day would be an easy sell.”

Event Highlights

The Tulsa Tugboats, last year’s third-place finisher in national garden hose pull competition, this afternoon bested their arch-rivals the Wichita Whippets in the 2014 National Garden Hose Pull championship match in Minneapolis. Although the Whippets had a distinct weight advantage, the Tugboats outlasted them to take the title.  The event favorite, the Cleveland Pack Mules, were eliminated early in spite of a stellar performance from star puller Paul Browning.

What’s Inside a Reverse Osmosis Tank?

Among the most frequently asked questions about the small storage tanks used for home reverse osmosis units is what type metal they are  made of.  The answer is that it doesn’t matter from the point of view of water purity because the water does not touch the walls of the tank itself.

In some tanks, especially older style tanks, the water is contained within a bottle made of an inert rubber material called butyl. The butyl bladder is surrounded by a pocket of air that pushes the water out of the tank. The only metal that the water touches is the threaded top stem of the tank where the water enters and  exits the tank.  In most modern tanks, the top stem is made of stainless steel.

Many current metal tanks use a slightly different arrangement.  Below is  a cutaway of a top quality modern Aquasky RO tank.

In the Aquasky tank the  upper and lower halves of the tank are divided by a butyl partition, which can be seen through the window that has been cut from the tank. The upper portion of the tank contains a polypropylene liner that is visible in the picture.  The water touches only the butyl partition on the bottom, the polypropylene liner, and the stainless tank neck.  It does not touch the metal of the tank itself.

Beneath the bladder is an air-filled compartment that provides pressure to push the water from the tank when the faucet is opened.  The small blue cap at the bottom left of the picture covers the valve where air is added to the tank.

And finally, what the world has been waiting for, a clear RO tank.

The tank above, which we received as a promotional sample from the Chinese manufacturer, is made of clear plastic and has a  replaceable transparent plastic bag that holds the purified water. An air charge on the outside of the bag drives the water out of the tank.The picture shows the tank filled with water.

For a selection of RO tanks:

Small undersink units.

Larger tanks, up to 80 gallons.

Water Treatment for Microcystin

by Gene Franks

This morning’s water news (August 3, 2014)  is filled with stories and pictures of the episode of microcystin contamination in the city of  Toledo, Ohio water supply.  Officials in Toledo warned residents not to drink the water and cautioned that boiling (a frequent emergency strategy for bacterial contamination) would only make things worse.  This is no small issue since it leaves 500,000 people without drinking water.

As usual, bottled water is the quick fix for supplying potable water, but providing bottled water for half a million people is no small matter.  The picture below suggests that supplies were in short supply.

I watched several news reports and read a few news releases.  Not one mentioned that home water treatment devices owned by the residents involved might be used.

Microcystin is one of a large number of toxins that are grouped under the name of cyanotoxins, and microcystin itself exists in several forms.  It all starts with blue-green algae,  also called cyanobacteria,  which are microscopic aquatic organisms. They are ancient creatures that  produced Earth’s earliest fossils.  Some blue green algae (often identified as “pond scum”) are important sources of human nutrition but others put out toxic ingredients called cyanotoxins that are harmful to humans.  Algae contamination of lakes has become very common because of overuse of fertilizers. 

Green Slime that plagues Great Lakes results mainly from fertilizers used by big agriculture.

According to Water Technology magazine, “Algae-containing water can be swallowed, can contact the skin or is inhaled in aerosol-like droplets while swimming or showering. Cyanotoxins can cause gastrointestinal and lung ailments; allergic responses; skin and eye irritation; liver damage; tumor growth; and neurotoxic (nerve) reactions. Effects of long-term consumption uncertain.”

Advice on water treatment for cyanotoxins from a web search ranges from the overly complex to the downright simple minded.  Bulletin board advice suggests “popping some activated charcoal to help neutralize these toxins” and taking milk thistle to protect the liver.  At the other extreme are a doctoral dissertation long on theory and short on practical advice and a technical paper on “Removal of microcystin-LR from water by polymers based on N-vinylformamide structure.” Another study features “a new kind of low-cost syntactic adsorbent from bamboo charcoal and chitosan” for use in impoverished regions.  Yet another describes an experimental project with a ” hollow fiber microfiltration pilot plant (2–4 m³/h)” in which ” high removals of cyanobacteria (98%) and total algae (99%) were obtained.”  Not very helpful for  the home owner who wants protection from microsystin.

The WHO and the EPA offer advice aimed mainly at public water suppliers, not individuals.  In both cases, the treatment recommendations are broad and generalized.  The EPA, for example, notes the effectiveness of chlorination and potassium permanganate to control the organism but warns of problems with side effects. Likewise, the possibility of using flocculation and subsequent filtration has its pros and cons.   Powdered activated carbon can be used to remove toxins as can granular activated carbon.  “GAC filters are effective in removing microcystins if they are properly replaced or regenerated when total organic carbon breakthrough is high. Usually, higher concentrations of activated carbon are necessary to effectively remove toxins; repeated treatment may be needed to totally remove the toxins completely.”  The EPA also notes the effectiveness of UV for controlling cyanotoxins but says that high doses are needed.

These, as mentioned, are strategies for city water departments, not homeowners. In general, they are not commonly practical for city water suppliers.  Carbon beds large enough to effectively remove toxins of this nature are not used by most municipal suppliers.

Here’s what Water Technology Magazine says about treating cyanotoxins:

Activated carbon is effective and can resolve cyanobacteria-caused taste and odor issues.  Reverse osmosis (RO), nanofiltration and ultrafiltration will remove/reduce single-cell cyanobacteria, and may also help reduce cyanotoxins.  Disinfection methods (such as chlorination) may kill cyanobacteria but not eliminate the cyanotoxins they release.

Finally, the search for microsystin with a variety of keywords got one persistent ambulance chaser ad for ceramic filters. The linked site itself does not discuss microsystin, but the ad implies that the ceramic filters advertised will take care of the problem.

What I would do if I lived in Toledo

What conclusions should we draw from this in regard to common home water treatment devices?

Although untrafiltration, microfiltration, and nanofiltration devices have been used with some success to treat microsystin, these are not commonly used in homes. Reverse osmosis units, however, are common, and RO has been shown to be 95% plus effective in this area.  If I lived in Toledo,  I would trust my undersink RO unit, with its extremely tight membrane and two carbon block filters. Keep in mind that the same reservations that apply to using RO in standard “boil water” situations also apply here: While the contaminants in question are too large to pass through the RO membrane, the device itself was not designed for long-term “sanitation” of water that is infested with dangerous bacteria. Live organisms can grow around o ring seals.  But, on a short term basis, I would trust my RO unit.

Ultraviolet systems used in domestic water treatment are not potent enough to inactivate cyanotoxins.

Chlorine, in high enough doses, can control cyanotoxins, but the dosage used by public water supplies is too low.  Chloramine is not effective against cyanotoxins.

I can’t find evidence that would make me trust a ceramic filter in this situation, although a good ceramic filter with a carbon core would probably produce safe water.

To wrap it up, I would drink water from my home RO unit if I lived in Toledo, but I would be reluctant to recommend that others do the same. As they always say, “More research is needed.”

Root Vegetables Irrigated With Treated Wastewater Can Take Up Certain Drugs

Wastewater Reuse: A field study shows that carrots and sweet potatoes accumulate an anticonvulsant drug and a drug metabolite at potentially unsafe concentrations

by Janet Pelley

 In an experimental plot, scientists in Israel irrigated sweet potatoes with treated wastewater to determine if the vegetables accumulated pharmaceuticals from the water.

Source: Chemical and Engineering News.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

New Easy-Off  Water Filter Housings Make Cartridge Changes Easy

by Gene Franks

Sometimes standard items work so well that it’s hard to see how they can be improved.  This has been the case with what is commonly called the “Big Blue” water filter containers that hold the standard-sized 4.5″ diameter filter cartridges — either 10″ or 20″ in length.

Sizes 3 and 4 are “Big Blue” units. (Click for larger image.)

There is now an improvement over the Big Blue that makes cartridge changes easier, makes o-ring replacement usually unnecessary, and virtually assures leak-free cartridge replacement.

Our new Easy-Off housings from Viqua use a unique lock ring seal that simply presses the sump.  With conventional housings, the sump is screwed into the cap by twisting the sump. The lock-ring design does away with the problem of pinched o-rings and o-rings that are flattened by over-tightening.

The picture shows the lock ring held by the wrench.  The ring can actually be hand tightened onto the blue threads of the cap to make a perfect seal.  Only the ring turns; the sump itself does not turn but is pressed tightly against the cap by the tightening of the lock ring.

The advanced housing has other features that set it apart from conventional filter vessels. One very nice feature is a pre-tapped  cap that allows for easy addition of a pressure gauge.  The bottom of the sump is also pre-tapped and capped so that the sump can be drained from the bottom if desired.

A pressure gauge can be easily installed on the cap.

Bottom drain plug can be removed with a screwdriver.

One final note:  The Easy-Off housings work only with radial style cartridges.  They can’t be used for axial  filters.  Radial style includes all carbon blocks and sediment cartridges.  Axials are mainly media cartridges: cartridges with an impermeable outer shell that are usually filled with granular media.  The test is, if you can pick the cartridge up and look through the center hole like a telescope, the new housings will work.  If you can’t see all the way through, the cartridge can’t be used with the new Easy-Off housings.

The new housings are sold with wrench, mounting bracket, and screws, so the only thing more you need to make a whole house filter is a filter cartridge.

Pricing and more details.

Slamming Shut the Doors 

A excerpt from an extensive Journal Sentinel study of Great Lakes devastation by Zebra and quagga mussels:  How invasive species changed the Great Lakes forever.  

A watershed moment has arrived for the Great Lakes.

After decades of regulatory paralysis, a federal judge has forced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to begin requiring overseas ships to decontaminate their ballast water before discharging it into the five lakes that together span a surface area the size of the United Kingdom.

Despite their vastness, for thousands of years the inland seas above Niagara Falls were as isolated from the outside world as a Northwoods Wisconsin pond. That all changed in 1959. The U.S. and Canadian governments obliterated the lake’s natural barrier to invasive fish, plants, viruses and mollusks with the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, a system of channels, locks and dams that opened the door for ocean freighters to sail up the once-wild St. Lawrence River, around Niagara Falls and into the heart of the continent.

Small boats had access to the lakes since the 1800s thanks to relatively tiny man-made navigation channels stretching in from the East Coast and a canal at Chicago that artificially linked Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River basin.

But the consequences of opening a nautical freeway into the Great Lakes for globe-roaming freighters proved disastrous — at least 56 non-native organisms have since been discovered in the lakes, and the majority arrived as stowaways in freighter ballast tanks.

These invaders have decimated native fish populations and rewired the way energy flows through the world’s largest freshwater system, sparking an explosion in seaweed growth that rots in reeking pockets along thousands of miles of shoreline. The foreign organisms are implicated in botulism outbreaks that have suffocated tens of thousands of birds on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. They are among the culprits responsible for toxic algae blooms on Lake Erie that threaten public water supplies.

The hope is the new ballast discharge regulations will shut the door to new invasions.

The reality: The Environmental Protection Agency has already acknowledged they are not stringent enough to do that job.

The agency blames a lack of technology to adequately disinfect ballast tanks. Critics blame a lack of resolve in getting tough with the relatively tiny overseas shipping industry that has done so much damage to this singularly important natural resource; an average of fewer than two such ships visit the lakes each day during the Seaway’s nine-month, ice-free shipping season.

“We can do much better,” says biologist Gary Fahnenstiel, who spent his career chronicling the ecological unraveling of Lake Michigan for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “If we really care about the lakes.”

Solving the Seaway ballast problem isn’t just about the Great Lakes, because the invaders have a history of making their way into waters across the continent. Out West, where Great Lakes invasive mussels are spreading as fast as boats are towed from lake to lake, states now have laws to throw people in jail and fine them thousands of dollars for transporting the same species Seaway freighters dumped on the continent with impunity.

Great Lakes advocates predict the bubbling frustration out West over the Seaway’s role in their troubles will erupt if — or when — Seaway ships unleash yet another invader.

Zebra Mussel

Zebra Mussels (click for larger view)

“The industry has had this grace period to find solutions,” says Phyllis Green, superintendent of Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. “The grace period they have been given will hit the fan when they find the next one.”

The pressure is mounting inside the Great Lakes basin as well, because even as the EPA leaves this front door to the Great Lakes cracked open, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is under fire from Congress to shut the back door — the Chicago canal system that is the prime pathway for Asian carp to invade the lakes. Rebuilding the natural divide between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River basin is a project that likely wouldtake years and cost billions of dollars.

But it begs the question: Why spend all this money to close the back door if we aren’t going to shut and seal the front door as well?

Building a barrier to protect the upper Great Lakes from Seaway invaders would actually be simpler than restoring the natural watershed divide at Chicago. In fact, such a barrier already exists.

It’s called Niagara Falls.

Read the full study here.

Pure Water Gazette Fair Use Statement

Umbra on Rain Barrels

The except below is  from Grist’s popular “Ask Umbra” feature.  One rain barrel hazard that Umbra leaves out is getting the Rain Barrel Song in your head.  Once there, it can stay for days. Umbra’s comments  illustrate that owning and using even the simplest of objects can be really complicated.–Hardly Waite.

Rain barrels in general are unequivocally healthy for the planet. Simple systems designed to funnel rainwater from your roof into storage tanks, rain barrels relieve pressure on stormwater systems, reduce the energy used to treat and transport water, and save you roughly 1,300 gallons of tap water per summer. [But, there may be some drawbacks.]

Once it hits your roof, a raindrop may run over and collect a number of contaminants. Everything from roof-treatment chemicals to airborne heavy-metal pollutants to mold to the poop from roosting birds or squirrels may be swept into your clean-looking barrel. So while using the water to irrigate trees, shrubs, and flowers is universally smiled upon, some people get a little queasy about putting it on plants they’ll eventually be eating. Might those rooftop nasties make you sick?

I hate to rain on your parade, but there’s not a lot of research out there to provide a definitive answer. One 2013 study from Rutgers examined rain-barrel water for lead, zinc, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and E. coli bacteria. The water harbored no PAHs and little heavy metals, and most (but not all) samples were also low in bacteria. It is possible to have your runoff tested for contaminants at a local health department or well-water testing facility – but experts at Rutgers say testing thoroughly enough for meaningful results is likely impractical and expensive for home gardens.

What we’re left with then . . . is your personal tolerance for risk. I can tell you that plenty of gardeners do dip into the rain barrel to water their veggies. Experts can tell you the risk is minimal, but the practice is not entirely without peril. You should definitely skip it if your roof is copper or has been treated with chromated copper arsenate or zinc (used to prevent algal growth). If not, though, you must decide for yourself.

Feeling lucky? It’s smart to take some precautions. Water the veggies and herbs with a drip or trickle irrigator rather than pouring on the plants themselves; this minimizes direct contact and harnesses the filtration power of the soil. Water in the morning to allow for drying and UV light disinfection, and don’t use rainwater close to harvest time. Always, always wash your veggies thoroughly with potable water before you eat them. You might also consider installing a “first flush” feature that diverts the first few gallons from any rain into a separate barrel, as these are the most likely to contain troublesome additives (though other research casts doubts on this system’s efficacy, too). And finally, make sure to keep your barrel clean throughout the season.

Feeling not so lucky? That’s OK too – you can find loads of other uses for that water. Use it to wash your car, top off the pool, clean your gardening tools, and flush your toilet. And as I mentioned up top, rainwater is A-OK to use on non-edible plants. In fact, it’s even better than tap water because it doesn’t contain chlorine or calcium, which may harm beneficial bugs in the soil.

Source:  Grist (Ask Umbra)

 Military Water Pollution–A National Disgrace

“Almost every military site in this country is seriously contaminated,” said John D. Dingell, a soon-to-retire Michigan congressman who served in World War II. “Lejeune is one of many.”

Over the years, the US military has been the unquestioned leader in water pollution.  Newsweek for 7-25-14, cover pictured above, features an excellent study by Alexander Nazaryan of the military’s environmental crimes over recent decades, concentrating on Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.   As the article points out, however, Camp Lejeune is only a small part of an ugly picture of the US military’s war on the environment.

These military sites form a sort of toxic archipelago across the land: Kelly Air Force Base in Texas, where the Air Force allegedly dumped trichloroethylene (TCE) into the soil, part of what some residents call a “toxic triangle” in south-central Texas; McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, California, which includes not only fuel plumes and industrial solvents but also radioactive waste; Umatilla Chemical Depot in the plains of northern Oregon, where mustard gas and VX nerve gas were stored; Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a onetime sarin stockpile just north of Denver; the Massachusetts Military Reservation on Cape Cod, poisoned by explosives and perchlorate, a rocket fuel component that is emerging as a major Pentagon pollutant. But because Camp Lejeune’s abuses and betrayals are more flagrant, it has become a test case for whether the military can defend our soil without ruining it.

Here is an excerpt from a detailed study which we urge you to read in its entirety.  It focuses on one of many health problems, male breast cancer,  caused by the military’s lack of environmental concern.

Men With Mastectomy Scars

Camp Lejeune, built in 1941, is 240 square miles in area, making it the largest Marine base east of the Mississippi River, and the second largest in the nation after Camp Pendleton, near San Diego. Situated at the swampy mouth of the New River, it is an ideal training ground for the sorts of amphibious assaults that are the Marines’ favored means of arriving at the war dance. From here, leathernecks shipped out to the Pacific theater of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The Marines killed in the 1983 terrorist bombings of a barracks in Beirut had also come from Lejeune; a memorial to them sits in a wooded glade at the camp’s edge.

In the decade before Camp Lejeune was built, the chemical industry saw the advent of the “safety solvents” TCE and tetrachloroethylene (PCE). These were chemical cleaning agents of the organochlorine group: TCE was a degreaser for machine parts; PCE was used in dry cleaning.

A military base is rife with machines. This sounds obvious, but it’s quite striking when you see all those tanks and airplanes and amphibious vehicles that seem perfectly poised for battle, even on a humid North Carolina afternoon when overseas wars might as well be waged in another galaxy. Part of that readiness is cleanliness, which your average military mechanic would have achieved, until very recently, by washing grease-covered parts in TCE.In 2004, a former Marine named Joseph Paliotti decided to clear his conscience. He was on the verge of perishing from cancer, and he suspected that Camp Lejeune had something to do with it. He had spent 16 years working on the base. “We’d come down there, we used to dump it: DDT, cleaning fluid, batteries, transformers, vehicles,” he told his local television station. “I knew sooner or later something was gonna happen.” Several days later, Paliotti died.

The cleaning of clothes might seem like a more innocuous matter, but that’s only because most people don’t have much of a notion of how a dry cleaning enterprise works. You surrender your clothes; they return immaculate. Magic! As it happens, the chemicals that cleanse a shirt are about as carcinogenic as those that cleanse an airplane engine.

One of the places at Camp Lejeune that could care for your uniform was ABC One Hour Cleaners, which sits just a few yards from the edge of the base. The dry cleaners, which started operation in 1964 and ended on-site cleaning service in 2005, did nothing different from what thousands of other dry cleaners did around the United States: It used PCE as a cleaning solvent. Some of the PCE sludge was used to fill potholes, while much of the liquid waste ended up in the ground, just like the TCE used to clean machines across the road, behind the barbed wire.

The TCE and PCE percolated through the sandy soil of Camp Lejeune and into the shallow Castle Hayne aquifer, from which the base drew its water. Also flowing into the soil was benzene from the Hadnot Point fuel farm. A component of gasoline, benzene is an aromatic hydrocarbon. Its name does not mean that it is pleasantly pungent. Instead, the deceptively alluring adjective refers to the strong carbon-hydrogen latticework of the compound. Like other aromatic hydrocarbons, benzene is a carcinogen that readily enters the body.

An Associated Press report found that as “late as spring 1988, the underground tanks at Hadnot Point were leaking about 1,500 gallons of fuel a month—a total of more than 1.1 million gallons, by some estimates.” Eventually, the leaked fuel would form an underground layer 15 feet deep, a carcinogenic band essentially covering the aquifer from which the drinking water was drawn.

Among those who drank that water was Mike Partain, who was born on base. His father was a Marine, as was his grandfather. He lived in the same housing complex where the Ensmingers conceived their daughter Janey. He joined the Navy but was discharged because of a debilitating rash that would overtake his body without explanation. Eventually, Partain ended up in Tallahassee, Florida, where he was a teacher and, later, an insurance adjuster.

Then married with four children, Partain was in good health until the age of 39. (He has since divorced; “my marriage didn’t survive Lejeune,” he told me.) Toxins, like terrorist sleeper cells, are patient. As he would later write for the website of Semper Fi, a documentary about Camp Lejeune, in April 2007 “my wife gave me a hug before bed one night. As she did, her hand came across a curious bump situated above my right nipple. There was no pain, but it felt very odd.” Partain went for tests, which revealed an almost incredible diagnosis: breast cancer.

Male breast cancer is rare enough in the general population, especially for someone like Partain who has no history of the disease in his family. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, only about 7 breast cancer victims out of 1,000 are men. Yet it turned out that many other men who’d lived on Camp Lejeune had developed breast cancer: Partain told me that he knows of 85 victims. Several of these aging men, showing mastectomy scars, posed for a 2011 calendar.

Coincidences do happen, even in cancer epidemiology. What looks like obvious causation to some may be just cruel fate, but the overall infrequency of the disease, combined with its relatively high frequency among the men of Camp Lejeune, as well as the other ailments plaguing those who lived on the base, made clear that there was a connection. “This has all the characteristics of a male breast cancer cluster,” the noted epidemiologist Richard Clapp said at the time. Camp Lejeune is, in fact, now widely believed to be the largest known cluster of the male variant of the disease.

Source:  Newsweek.

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 Twin Tank Water Softeners Are the Most Efficient Softeners Made

One of the most underrated “green” products available is the twin tank water softener. Although the initial cost is more, twin softeners can pay for themselves in water and salt savings. They also offer the satisfaction of being the most environmentally friendly of conventional water softeners.

A twin softener is essentially two identically-sized water softener resin tanks joined and controlled by a single softener valve. The control valve can be either a timer or a metered regeneration style, with metered being strongly preferred for this type softener.

To dispel a common misconception about twin softening units, the two tanks work one at a time. That is, you don’t get double softening. A single softener tank is more than adequate to reduce the hardness of most residential water to virtual zero. The twin unit operates by keeping one of its tanks in reserve. When the capacity of tank one is reached, the control valve immediately puts tank two into service, so that there can never be a time when hard water is being sent to the home, as can happen with single tank softeners. Even when a tank is being regenerated, soft water is being delivered to the home. And, unlike the single tank unit, twin units use soft water for regeneration.

Since the switch from one tank to the other can be made at any time of the day or night, no “reserve” needs to be programmed into the softener. With conventional one-tank units, a certain amount of the tank’s capacity–usually about one day’s expected usage–is always held in reserve. This is accomplished by simply programming the softener to regenerate a day early. By conservative estimate, this “reserve” requirement is responsible for about 15% of the salt and water used by a single-tank softener. Simple arithmetic tells you that if a softener that regenerates once a week always regenerates one day early, in a year it will simply throw away 48 days worth of its softening capacity. And what is really being tossed away is water and salt.

Applications

Twin tank units are especially good for applications that require a long, uninterrupted supply of soft water. For example, if a softener is used to pretreat hard water for a large reverse osmosis unit, it is difficult to assure that the reverse osmosis unit will not demand water when the softener is regenerating. A twin tank unit solves this problem by providing a never ending supply of soft water.

One of our local customers is a yogurt store that needs to protect its expensive yogurt machines from scaling. Yogurt machines run around the clock and it would be very impractical to turn them off so that a conventional water softener can regenerate its resin bed. A twin softener is a perfect solution. It provides an endless supply of treated water with fully automatic operation with no need to maintain a “reserve.”

Twin softeners are the most water and salt efficient softeners made. They regenerate less frequently because no “reserve” capacity has to be calculated. They have the added advantage of performing the regeneration with softened water, assuring a cleaner and more complete regeneration. Twin softeners are especially useful for applications requiring long service cycles that need an uninterrupted supply of soft water.