tomferrerojr
2009-09-02, 08:54 PM
Water Softeners and Onsite Systems
Many of us have our personal feelings as to the pros and cons of having a water softener when the home also has an onsite wastewater treatment system (septic system). Well the rest of the related world has their opinion too. The water softener people say ‘with 20 million water softeners out there we would have heard of problems by now. We haven’t!’ The scholars say ‘the discharge from water softeners upset the biological balance in the septic tank’ or ‘the additional salts are harmful to the soil structure and will cause premature failure of the drainfield’. Etc, etc, etc. The truth of the matter is that nobody really knows because the issue has not been studied thoroughly.
Maybe we will get some answers in the future. A task force has been formed comprised of interested parties including the US EPA, the Water Quality Association (the water softener people), WERF (the Water Environment Research Foundation), NOWRA (academia and service providers from the onsite industry), CIDWT ( the Consortium of Institutes for Decentralized Wastewater Treatment), NAWT, and others. NAWT has been invited to bring the pumpers perspective to the task force.
With financial assistance from the EPA, a workshop on the subject is being held on September 22-23, 2009 in Washington, DC. The goal of the workshop is to identify a list of issues that need to be studied and, since there is never enough money to get everything done, prioritize the list so that work can begin answering our questions on those issues determined to be of most importance.
NAWT needs your help! We would like to present information we have acquired from our field experiences. And we know you each have a few of them. We are not expected to ‘have the answers’ or understand why certain things may have happened. We just want to give anecdotal experiences where removing the water softener from the system solved the problem. Scenarios such as hydraulic overloading because of a leaking water softener or poor settling in the septic tank causing solids to be carried out into the drainfield. Things that were resolved by removing the water softener. Or, maybe you have a scenario where the water softener did not have a detrimental effect on the system. Either way we would like to help get to the bottom of this issue.
Your timely input is very important for us to get this information to the task force. Now is the time to speak up and have our voice be heard. A quick email reply on this listserver is all you need to do. If NAWT has further questions we will contact you. If you would rather email NAWT directly please email to info@nawt.org (info@nawt.org). Thank you for your help.
Many of us have our personal feelings as to the pros and cons of having a water softener when the home also has an onsite wastewater treatment system (septic system). Well the rest of the related world has their opinion too. The water softener people say ‘with 20 million water softeners out there we would have heard of problems by now. We haven’t!’ The scholars say ‘the discharge from water softeners upset the biological balance in the septic tank’ or ‘the additional salts are harmful to the soil structure and will cause premature failure of the drainfield’. Etc, etc, etc. The truth of the matter is that nobody really knows because the issue has not been studied thoroughly.
Maybe we will get some answers in the future. A task force has been formed comprised of interested parties including the US EPA, the Water Quality Association (the water softener people), WERF (the Water Environment Research Foundation), NOWRA (academia and service providers from the onsite industry), CIDWT ( the Consortium of Institutes for Decentralized Wastewater Treatment), NAWT, and others. NAWT has been invited to bring the pumpers perspective to the task force.
With financial assistance from the EPA, a workshop on the subject is being held on September 22-23, 2009 in Washington, DC. The goal of the workshop is to identify a list of issues that need to be studied and, since there is never enough money to get everything done, prioritize the list so that work can begin answering our questions on those issues determined to be of most importance.
NAWT needs your help! We would like to present information we have acquired from our field experiences. And we know you each have a few of them. We are not expected to ‘have the answers’ or understand why certain things may have happened. We just want to give anecdotal experiences where removing the water softener from the system solved the problem. Scenarios such as hydraulic overloading because of a leaking water softener or poor settling in the septic tank causing solids to be carried out into the drainfield. Things that were resolved by removing the water softener. Or, maybe you have a scenario where the water softener did not have a detrimental effect on the system. Either way we would like to help get to the bottom of this issue.
Your timely input is very important for us to get this information to the task force. Now is the time to speak up and have our voice be heard. A quick email reply on this listserver is all you need to do. If NAWT has further questions we will contact you. If you would rather email NAWT directly please email to info@nawt.org (info@nawt.org). Thank you for your help.