Page 6 - Travelore Issue 43 Fall 2018

Page 6 - DRVC Travelore
Part 4
Water Processing in the Motorhome
by Rod B. Kenly, President
This is the fourth of several articles concerning the pro- cessing of water in our RVs. I will have facts, and my opinion on what should be done. Your opinions may be different than mine, but I will try to present the data as well as I can.
In the previous three articles, this article, and a one more articles, I have or will discuss the following subjects:
• Water Input
• Water Filtering
• Water Softening
• Water Conditioning
I hope that you will find at least some of the information that I provide to be useful as well as a starting point for you to learn even more. Now let’s get started.
In the first three articles, I covered getting water from a city source or RV park to the motorhome flowing through filters to clean the water and improve the taste. If you remember from article three, my recommendation was that two, 10-inch cartridges (and housing) be used. The first was a sediment filter with a 1-micron capability and the second was a carbon block filter with 0.5-micron capa- bility.
In this article, I’m going to discuss softening the water. The definition of hard water is the amount of dissolved calcium and magnesium in the water. You know if you have hard water if you use soap and it doesn’t lather much, or you feel like there is resi- due left on your hands. When using hard water, more soap or detergent is needed to get things clean – whether it is your hands, hair, or laundry.
But more importantly, when hard water is heated (such as in a water heater), solid deposits of calcium carbonate can form. This scale can reduce the life your equipment, lower efficiency of your water heater, and clog pipes. A lot of people notice it
when they have to run vinegar (an acid) through their coffee maker to clean it.
Water hardness varies throughout the country. If you live on the east or west coast, you have mainly soft water. But if you live in
the west or middle of the country, you have hard or very hard water. Water that is between 0-60 mg/L is considered soft, everything else is moderate, hard, or very hard.
Scale builg-up in a pipe caused by hard water.
Water softening reduces the concentration of calcium, magnesium, and other metal cations in hard water. Switching from hard to soft water helps avoid scale buildup, increases the life of appliances, prevents rust stains, improves taste/odor, helps with rough or dry skin, and increases lathering of soaps. The benefit of softening water, especially if you are in one of the red or white areas
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