Water softeners

mobilcastle

Well-known member
I am looking at On The Go Water softeners and I was wondering if anyone is using them and what you think of that brand. Any idea how heavy the units are after they have been used and the beads are wet. I am assuming the advertised weights are dry shipping weight. I am looking at the standard and double standard. I like the bigger one for capacity but I don't want something that weighs a ton to move around. If you have one do you leave it outside or have you mounted it inside-pictures would be great. Thanks for your info.
Steve
 

jbeletti

Well-known member
Hi Steve,

I used a couple different softeners, including the On-The-Go unit. It worked fine. Had to recharge it a bit more often than the Trav-L-Soft unit. On-The-Go uses table salt to clean the resin bed, so that was a bit easier - where as others use rock salt.

The weight when full of water is a bit heavy and if used outdoors, you'll be humping a bit of weight to get it back into storage. I placed a 2-stage water filtration system and the On-The-Go softener in a red plastic rectangular Coke crate. I humped that thing up and down for a couple years and got tired of doing that.

Next, I placed it all inside a large tote and left the tote in the ODS storage bay and plumbed it all in. Worked fine. Only down side was that I had a sliding storage tray that I could only slide out the DS now.

Today, I don't use the softener but still have one if I decide to add it back in. With the assistance of another club member, I now have my 2 water filters behind the utility wall, permanently plumbed in and out of site and out of my way.

Best of luck,

Jim
 

dave10a

Well-known member
The ionization of the beads does not add weight, but when the softner is full of water does. Water is about 7lbs per gallon, so two-three gallons would be approx 21-24lbs. Also you can figure that it will need to be recharged once a week if you have a washer/dryer on board with 15 grain harness of water in the campground. I think my unit uses about a half a pound of beads which will provide about 15,000 grains of hardness softening capability. Manual recharging is somewhat of a hassle and if you do it in the campground you should have a sewer adapter that allows you to run the back flush and rise water into it. I use the tank hose/cleaner adapter between the trailer connection and hose. Also, I don't think the campground management care if you flush and run salt brinning rinse water into their sewer system because salt water is not harmful to sewers--
 

boatdoc

Well-known member
We use one down on the river in AZ at our winter stay. It's one by "Interstate H2O" in Yuma. It's been great now for 4 years. Yes, I recharge it every week but it's minimal and gives me something to do for 20 minutes. Big diff in soap lather and plumbing corrosion than without. It stores nicely right there in the UDC while traveling. We don't use it here in Oregon when doing the weekend thing.
 

lwmcguir

Well-known member
Water softeners exchange sodium (unless you use K) to regenerate the resin beeds. Ca and Mg both have two positive charges so you wind up with quite a bit more Na in your softened water. Not a problem unless you plan on drinking it. Soft water is more corrosive than hard water but doesn't scale up the hot water system or the shower and so on. Water weighs 8.34 pounds per gallon at nominal room temperature. Softeners also remove iron and are great filters. Resin must be kept damp or wet or the beads will dry out and crack. A normal regeneration has to take nearly an hour if you go through all the steps. Back flush, Brine Draw, Slow Rinse, the contact time with the regenerant and the resin is important to get the KGR you need to get the maximum gallons throughput of your unit.
 
Top