What are the differences between automatic water softener systems and portable exchange tanks?
Hi, I’m Jay with Ising’s Culligan Water. I’m here today to discuss the differences between automatic systems and portable exchange tanks.
There’s a variety of automatic treatment systems. These different systems are composed of water softeners, carbon filters, depth filters, and certain treatment systems that remove hydrogen sulfide and iron. To understand the regeneration process, we will look at water softeners as an example. In water softeners, there is a resin and or media inside of the softener that removes the impurities out of the water that creates hardness, for instance, calcium and magnesium. As the water flows through the softening system and the resin removes these impurities, the resin only has a certain life on how long it lasts before that resin needs cleaned. Typically, the hardness of the water in different areas will vary, therefore the resin inside of the tank will last as long, dependent on the hardness of the water. Therefore, the resin in the tank needs cleaned and or what we call, in our world, regenerated.
An automatic system will automatically regenerate this resin on site. There is a separate take that sits next to a water softener called a brine tank. The brine tank holds a brine solution that is made up of salt and water. When the resin needs cleaned and the regeneration process takes place, the water softener itself will suck the brine solution out of the brine tank and it will wash the resin in the softening tank. At that point, the brine solution that has now cleaned the resin has taken all the hardness and impurities off of the resin and will flush it down the drain. The resin is now new again and ready for use.
The difference, though, between an automatic system and a portable exchange tank is the fact, for the portable exchange, we do the regeneration process for you. Therefore, instead of a second tank sitting on site and it automatically occurring, whether it be set up on a time clock, meaning every couple of days at a certain time, or based on a meter, after you use so many gallons, we base the size of the tank on how many gallons you use a month or every couple of weeks, at which point we’ll show back up, give you a new tank. We will take your old tank back to our shop and we will regenerate the tank ourselves. There are also certain areas, especially in the state of California, where the city municipalities do not allow automatic systems because they do not want the brine solution washed into the drain. Therefore, please check with your city municipality for what is regulated and what is acceptable in your area. 0:02:51.7 Jay: I hope you found this video helpful. If you have any other follow-up questions, please leave them below or give us a call at 925-447-3717. If you liked this video and want to receive releases of new videos, please don’t forget to hit subscribe below. Thank you, and see you next video.
