Water Softening

fiestaman · 26-01-2012 10:18am #1

Hi,i am thinking of getting a salt system to treat lime in my water. i am just woundering would you be consuming the salt through the water or is it gone out of it before it gets to the taps.

NIMAN · 27-01-2012 11:16pm

You tend to get a separate tap that isn't affected by the salt, so you can drink without getting your blood pressure through the roof.

aah yes · 30-10-2012 1:24am

NIMAN wrote: »

You tend to get a separate tap that isn't affected by the salt, so you can drink without getting your blood pressure through the roof.

That's a common misconception.

There is no sodium chloride imparted into softened water, only a trace sodium level of around 100 ppm / mg/l
depending on original water hardness and background raw water sodium levels.

The strict EU, HSE and EPA sodium concentration in tap water is 200 ppm / mg/l

Bottled waters like the popular San Pellegrino have 130 ppm / mg/l

Supermarket milk has around 300 to 500 ppm / mg/l

Also there are zero chlorides in softened water, though the safe EU level is 250 ppm / mg/l

So if you want to adjust your blood pressure either up or down which elevated sodium in diets can do, not necessarily upwards as it has a nominal causal effect, then you want to increase dietary sodium above the daily 2,400 mg/l to above the national average of 3,200 mg/L.

To gain an increase of 800 mg/l in daily dietary sodium and risk blood pressure variations up or down, you would need to focus on drinking about 8 litres of softened water per day, and avoid all other beverages.

If you drink 50% of your daily water intake straight from the softened water tap, say 1 litre, then you would increase dietary sodium by around 100 mg which would be a higher than the average daily intake for potable water of 2 litres, and higher than we typically drink from the soft water tap, as most people drink a variety of beverages, so this scenario would only therefore increase your dietary sodium intake by about 4%.

Doctors are more concerned about adding salt to your food, the average we put on food is about 15% through the salt shaker daily.

Doctors are even more concerned about the level of sodium ingested through processed foods which make up a large part of the remaining 85% we consume from salty foods like popular cereals, cornflakes, soups, bread, ham, bacon etc.

Regular softened water drinkers, taking an average of maybe 1/2 a litre (2% daily sodium intake) compared to the high sodium levels in milk, and the range of other beverages such as carbonated drinks which contain much more, also lesser sodium beverages such as tea, coffee, fruit juice, wine, beer, etc, etc, means that softened water is a tiny proportion or on average of 50 mg as part of the 2,400 mg we are aiming for, or 50 mg as part of the average 3,200 mg we generally tend to take in.

Of course if you are not getting enough of the daily 2,400 mg sodium intake we need, and instead take in below, 2,000 mg, then even drinking 2 or 3 litres of softened water a day, will not be enough to make up the deficit we need, so you will have to eat more cornflakes !

I hope that comprehensively answers the sodium / salt question.

NIMAN · 30-10-2012 1:34am

Only going by the adverts of those companies which sell salt-based water softeners, and they provide a separate tap for water that hasn;t gone through the salt.

If the fact is incorrect its them thats wrong, not me!:D

shane0007 · 31-10-2012 12:43am

gws wrote: »

There is no sodium chloride imparted into softened water, only a trace sodium level of around 100 ppm / mg/l
depending on original water hardness and background raw water sodium levels.

The strict EU, HSE and EPA sodium concentration in tap water is 200 ppm / mg/l

Stainless steel cylinder manufacturers will not give a cylinder warranty if the supply to the cylinder contains over 150mg/l of sodium.
Other restrictions also apply.

aah yes · 23-05-2014 11:50pm

shane0007 wrote: »

Stainless steel cylinder manufacturers will not give a cylinder warranty if the supply to the cylinder contains over 150mg/l of sodium.
Other restrictions also apply.

Take an imaginary scenario - using a full brine salt solution 26% sodium chloride concentration with sodium levels up to 100,000 ppm present and chloride levels up to 160,000 ppm present in certain hot water cylinders, - sure I expect manufacturers would want to make them out of a quality stainless steel with titanium anodes !!

Especially a quality grade of SS instead of the lower grade 304 probably 316 in cold waters, or higher if the hot water was using boiling brine solution (260,000 ppm sodium chloride) to avoid Chloride SSC (stress corrosion cracking).

see ... http://www.ssina.com/corrosion/stress-corrosion-cracking.html

Chloride is more of the issue in these "imaginary" super high level, aggressive, sodium chloride concentrations.

Now take another imaginary scenario - using a 10% brine salt solution 2.6% sodium chloride concentration with sodium levels up to 10,000 ppm present and chloride levels up to 16,000 ppm present in certain hot water cylinders, (90% DILUTED) - still, sure I expect manufacturers would want to make them out of some sort of stainless steel ? Sea waters would have these kinds of levels of sodium chloride levels.

Now take a still unlikely scenario - using a 1% brine salt solution 0.26% sodium chloride concentration with sodium levels up to 1,000 ppm present and chloride levels up to 1,600 ppm present in certain hot water cylinders, (99% DILUTED) - still, sure I expect manufacturers would want to make them out of some sort of basic stainless steel ?

Now take the more likely scenario - using a 0.1% brine salt solution 0.026% sodium chloride concentration with sodium levels up to 100 ppm present and chloride levels up to 160 ppm present in certain hot water cylinders, (99.9% DILUTED), I expect manufacturers would want to make them out of some sort of basic copper ?

Soft water is at this more realistic scenario at trace level of sodium. Sodium is in itself, odourless, colourless and tasteless even in levels 100, or 1,000, or 10,000 times the level of soft water, as it is chloride that has the "salty" taste and chloride in higher concentration levels approaching full boiling water brine concentrations that have some issues with low grade stainless.

Trace levels of sodium have no aggressive characteristic whatsoever.

Water aggressiveness is properly detailed when the Langelier Saturation Index of a water profile is used to check on the interactivity of pH, hardness, alkalinity and water temperature usually at levels in naturally sourced water, but there is no inclusion to account for the low trace levels of sodium or chloride, these have no effect to "water aggressiveness".

Chloride can only become a more aggressive parameter when multiplied by 100 times of a trace level of say 160ppm.

As there is no chloride in softened water, you could multiply soft water chloride by multiples of thousands, and there would be no problems.

Water Softening

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