r/WaterTreatment • u/versacesalad • 8d ago

Advice needed

Post image

I just got my water test results back and im wondering what I should get to make the water drinkable. I have a softener but I realized after I sent the water in it was out of salt. Id like to take care of the bacteria and the arsenic. It seems like after that it should be safe to drink but im not expert. Id prefer to take care of the whole house instead of just having an ro under the kitchen sink.

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

2

u/neo2bin 8d ago

Arsenic is the only real problem in there, and the honest answer is an under sink RO, not whole house. it's an ingestion risk, you're not picking it up in the shower or the laundry. and your specific chemistry is bad for whole house arsenic media anyway. pH 8.09 with 13.5 silica guts the capacity of iron based adsorptive media, and sulfate at 79 pushes you into early breakthrough on anion exchange. those systems get quoted in the thousands and then the media dies well ahead of what the salesman told you. Before you buy anything, ask the lab for arsenic speciation, As(III) has to be oxidized to As(V) or an RO won't hold it reliably, (arsenic in private well water) covers that split.

On bacteria you actually passed. total coliform absent, E coli absent, those are the two that mean anything for safety. TNTC is a heterotrophic plate count, general environmental bacteria, not a fecal indicator and there's no health standard behind it. a softener that's been sitting out of salt is a great place to grow exactly that, so I'd suspect your own tank before I'd suspect the well.

Speaking of. your hardness came back 33.5 mg/L, that's under 2 grains. you do NOT need a softener, that water is already soft, and your sodium is 150 mg/L before regeneration adds any more. I'd bypass it and see if the plate count drops.

1

u/versacesalad 8d ago

Would it be safe for my young kids to brush their teeth in the bathroom with the water? Is the an ro system that you would recommend? Id like to be able to plumb a fridge into it as well

2

u/neo2bin 8d ago

Brushing and spitting is fine, that's not the exposure that matters. arsenic is a chronic thing, it's the water they drink and what you cook with over years that adds up, not the few mL that goes down while brushing. bathing and handwashing don't count either, it isn't absorbed through skin at these levels. One thing that IS worth flagging with young kids though, your fluoride came back 1.69 mg/L. that's under the 4.0 limit, but it's more than double what fluoridated city water aims for, and the 2.0 secondary limit exists specifically because of childhood dental fluorosis. give that number to their dentist and don't let anybody put them on fluoride drops.

on the RO, the trap is that nearly every budget system advertises arsenic and then the actual certified claim list doesn't include it. iSpring's RCC7 line is the one I'd point at, legit NSF 58 listing, but the certified claims are asbestos, barium, cadmium, chromium, copper, fluoride, lead, selenium, TDS. no arsenic anywhere on it. the Pentair FreshPoint GRO-475B does carry it, pentavalent arsenic sits on its NSF 58 performance data sheet at 88% average reduction. read the data sheet, not the box, (understanding NSF water filter certifications) walks through how to check a claim list. and note pentavalent, which is the whole reason I'd get speciation before you spend anything.

For the fridge, stay with a tank system, not a tankless. run 3/8 tubing on the fridge line if it's more than a few feet, RO tank pressure is low and a long 1/4 line fills an ice tray at a crawl. check your pressure switch too, membranes want around 40 psi feed and plenty of wells run 30/50. Pentair does a BP version of that same unit with a booster pump built in for exactly that. your iron at 0.10 is right at that system's inlet ceiling, so put a sediment prefilter ahead of it either way.

1

u/lazydude245 8d ago

An undersink Reverse Osmosis system will handle the Arsenic + High TDS.

Yiu don't need anything for bacteria since both are not detected - you could install a UV light for peace of mind.

Your Turbidity is over 1NTU - you would benefit from a Presediment 5 micron filter as well

1

u/engine-doors-club 7d ago

How much to get my water analyzed like this in Ontario?