Hard water concerns and water softener selection question

[CoachTom]

I live in the Tampa Bay Area and we have very hard water. I recently purchased and installed a Caldera spa with the Freshwater swg system. It recommends a CH of 50 but our fill water is about 200-250.

The spa store has some sort of pillow you can put in and run the Vanishing Act process on the spa to lower CH but it takes about a day of running it (6 hours per run) to get CH in the right levels. Not to mention the cost of purchasing a new pillow every time I refill.

I’m considering the addition of a water softener for the house as it would also improve other water concerns in the house but not sure what route to take.

I was looking at a no salt option such as NuuvoH2O for its simplicity and easy installation but not sure if this actually solves my CH problem in the spa. This system appears to convert the calcium bicarbonate to calcium citrate and allows it to pass through.

Will that actually work for my spa? Will I get correct CH readings? Anything I’m not thinking about or considering?

Much appreciate the help!

 

[mas985]

Where did you see 50 ppm for CH? The spa manuals shown here show a range of 75-150 ppm without salt and 25-75 ppm with salt.

Hot Tub Owner's Manuals - Caldera Spas

Find the owner's manual for your Caldera Spa to learn about features, maintenance requirements and troubleshooting.

www.calderaspas.com

But even if CH is higher than 150 ppm, you can negate any deleterious effects by keeping CSI below 0.

 

[PoolStored]

Where did you see 50 ppm for CH?

Page 4 in the Freshwater Salt System manual

https://www.calderaspas.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Freshwater-Salt-System-Owners-Manual.pdf

 

[mas985]

50 ppm is a target but it still allows for a range:



But I think they are just trying to prevent scale and there are other ways to do that with PH and alkalinity.

 

[CoachTom]

Target of 50 but yes, a range of 25-75 is acceptable. Regardless, I’m way over that so I still need a reliable and efficient way to reduce my CH when refilling the spa. Thoughts on the water softener as a solution?

 

[mas985]

Just want to point out that if you have PH/TA at the low end of the range, you can easily have CH at 250 ppm as still maintain a CSI of -0.46 so it is very unlikely for scale to occur.

Manufactures do not always understand chemistry the way we do here on TFP. In fact, you will notice no mention of CSI in any of their text on water balance.

If it were me, I would just keep CSI in the negative range.

 

[Bperry]

Target of 50 but yes, a range of 25-75 is acceptable. Regardless, I’m way over that so I still need a reliable and efficient way to reduce my CH when refilling the spa. Thoughts on the water softener as a solution?

Keeping calcium hardness that low seems unrealistic. Sounds like they maybe just have that to make sure all warranty claims can be easily denied since no one can maintain that low.

 

[CoachTom]

So just focus on CSI? Maintaining low ph is nearly impossible for me. Same goes for my pool. It’s always been a struggle. But if I can add acid regularly to keep ph below 8 then I should be able to keep CSI around zero or below and not have to worry about scaling. Is that the only reason to worry about CH? Thanks!

Keeping calcium hardness that low seems unrealistic. Sounds like they maybe just have that to make sure all warranty claims can be easily denied since no one can maintain that low.

The Vanishing Act process they have can get the CH down below 100 quite effectively. Just wondering if it’s actually necessary.

 

[mas985]

Scale is dependent on many factors (e.g. PH, TA, CH, SALT, TEMP) which is why CSI is a much better metric than attempting to manage each level impendently.