Tman,

I would first try out the Mortons rust pellen salt to see if that works.
Also, you might be seeing some residual from the toilet tanks themselves.

Iron comes in a few forms. Dissolved (clear water iron), solid (the type the
softner does not remove) and colloidial (iron that has attached it self or
encapsulates to another particle ie tannins, magnesium ad infinitum)

If it is brownish red in color and wipes easily from the bowl with a finger
than your sediment filter needs to be readjusted downward to say a 5 or even
1 micron.

What size is your filter? Is it a standard 9 inch or a big blue (or white)
filter?

Let me know how it goes?

rik

--

Padded room with a view
RWC3
"Tman" wrote in message
igy.com...
Hi, I have well water with relatively soft water, but a lot of clear water
iron (Hardness is 13mg/L, Iron is 1.4 mg/L pre-treatment).

So without too much analysis, I went ahead and bought and installed a
Kenmore water softener. This one is spec'ed to be able to remove up to 8
ppm of clear water iron, so I figured it will only help. I am still
noting
some "rust" discoloration on the inside of toilet bowls after about two
weeks. Nothing major, but I have a couple questions on the choice of water
softener...

- Is this a good / OK treatment choice for the water quality that I have
pre-treatment?
- Do I need to do anything special to the softener as far as maintenance
when operated under this condition? I.e. clean more frequently, use
special
salt (Morton rust remover salt??).
- It appears to me that the softener decides when to regenerate the resin
bed by measuring total water usage between cycles (it has a water flow
meter), and calculating the condition of the resin bed by using a
user-entered hardness level. I programmed into the softener that my
hardness is 5 grains (quite a bit in excess of the real hardness). Should
I
over-estimate the hardness level that I program into the softener to
reflect
the fact that it will be the clear water iron that consumes the resin
cycle?
In other words, I am wondering if it is regenerating frequently enough.
It
goes about three weeks between cycles.

Thanks for any advice offered,
Tman.

PS high turbidity also, but have a good sediment filter installed
pre-water-softener, which seems to fix that up.

Subject: Kenmore water softener and clear water iron
From: "Tman"
Date: 6/30/2003 6:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: . com

Hi, I have well water with relatively soft water, but a lot of clear water
iron (Hardness is 13mg/L, Iron is 1.4 mg/L pre-treatment).

So without too much analysis, I went ahead and bought and installed a
Kenmore water softener. This one is spec'ed to be able to remove up to 8
ppm of clear water iron, so I figured it will only help. I am still noting
some "rust" discoloration on the inside of toilet bowls after about two
weeks. Nothing major, but I have a couple questions on the choice of water
softener...

- Is this a good / OK treatment choice for the water quality that I have
pre-treatment?
- Do I need to do anything special to the softener as far as maintenance
when operated under this condition? I.e. clean more frequently, use special
salt (Morton rust remover salt??).
- It appears to me that the softener decides when to regenerate the resin
bed by measuring total water usage between cycles (it has a water flow
meter), and calculating the condition of the resin bed by using a
user-entered hardness level. I programmed into the softener that my
hardness is 5 grains (quite a bit in excess of the real hardness). Should I
over-estimate the hardness level that I program into the softener to reflect
the fact that it will be the clear water iron that consumes the resin cycle?
In other words, I am wondering if it is regenerating frequently enough. It
goes about three weeks between cycles.

Thanks for any advice offered,
Tman.

PS high turbidity also, but have a good sediment filter installed
pre-water-softener, which seems to fix that up.










On the kenmore softners you need to enter the hardeness as 5 grains per I ppm
of iron. So if you have 5ppm or iron you need to enter 25grains plus your
hardness grains.

"Tman" wrote
Hi, I have well water with relatively soft water, but a lot of clear
water
iron (Hardness is 13mg/L, Iron is 1.4 mg/L pre-treatment).

So without too much analysis, I went ahead and bought and installed a
Kenmore water softener. This one is spec'ed to be able to remove up
to 8
ppm of clear water iron, so I figured it will only help. I am still
noting
some "rust" discoloration on the inside of toilet bowls after about
two
weeks. Nothing major, but I have a couple questions on the choice of
water
softener...

- Is this a good / OK treatment choice for the water quality that I
have
pre-treatment?
- Do I need to do anything special to the softener as far as
maintenance
when operated under this condition? I.e. clean more frequently, use
special
salt (Morton rust remover salt??).
- It appears to me that the softener decides when to regenerate the
resin
bed by measuring total water usage between cycles (it has a water flow
meter), and calculating the condition of the resin bed by using a
user-entered hardness level. I programmed into the softener that my
hardness is 5 grains (quite a bit in excess of the real hardness).
Should I
over-estimate the hardness level that I program into the softener to
reflect
the fact that it will be the clear water iron that consumes the resin
cycle?
In other words, I am wondering if it is regenerating frequently
enough. It
goes about three weeks between cycles.

Thanks for any advice offered,
Tman.

PS high turbidity also, but have a good sediment filter installed
pre-water-softener, which seems to fix that up.

Yes you need to increase the hardness to compensate for the iron as
someone else has said. I use 4 ppm/ppm of iron and others use 5. Your
valve and/or softener may not work very long on that amount of iron. If
you have problems with it and want to replace just the valve with what I
consider a much better valve, let me know. I have an adapter to convert
it to industry standard valves. Then you could use a Turbulator to keep
the resin cleaner.

With that amount of iron you should regenerate about every three days or
you're going to load up the resin and lose capacity and not get all the
iron out of the water. With no hardness, I would have proposed an iron
filter to you instead of a softener. And you can't filter soluble iron
with a sediment filter and if you don't keep the cartridge replaced
you'll be starving the softener for backwash water and it won't clean
itself well enough.

Gary
Quality Water Associates