Water Softeners with Carbon Added
Water softeners with carbon added is called carbon "sprinkling". You should never buy a water softener that has carbon in the same tank as the water softener regardless of the convincing slick sales pitches these people give you. This would include all carbons such as Activated Carbon (GAC), KDF Carbons including both KDF55 and KDF 85, coconut carbons or any other carbon. In fact you should normally not add anything other than softener resin to a water softener. Even if the carbon is placed at the bottom of the tank, it will mix into the softener resin when the unit regenerates or cleans itself. Once it mixes into the softener mineral bed there is effectively no way to remove it again. The carbon gets used up and once it has become depleted it can actually "dump" organics and other contaminants back into the water. And ALL carbon must be replaced. Buyers beware of companies who say they don't need replacing. To remove that carbon you would have to empty the ENTIRE tank of minerals and then pick out the black specs.
Can you imagine the cost of that service call? Many unscrupulous companies simply take out some of the perfectly good minerals off of the top and then add more carbon. Of course now you have fewer minerals to soften which means salt usage starts increasing dramatically. Most of these companies also sell salt. That is one heck of a "Coinky-dink" is it not?
Only add salt once per year
We know that when a softener is properly applied. Our customers say they average adding salt to their water softeners about once per year.
Water Softeners are made to soften, period. So if you need to remove chlorine and chemicals from the water. You should use a separate
Carbon Tank. And it should have a backwash feature to clean itself. A good example of state of the art technology in this regard is our "
Dual Purpose" softener/conditioner. We take a full sized softener. And then we stack another full sized tank on top. And then we fill it with activated carbon (or anything else we may need to). So when one tanks cleans itself. The other one gets cleaned as well with the same water. Thus making it FAR MORE efficient than using a softener and backwashing carbon tank separately. Please don't hesitate to give us a quick call for a quick evaluation of your issue. Keep in mind our technicians are not allowed to ask you to buy anything or pressure you in ANY way. They just answer your questions. And give you great advice. We are the online leader for water treatment worldwide.
